In New York, a judge has ruled that an Occupy Wall Street protester cannot stop prosecutors from getting his tweets. The judge said there was no overreaching for the request of the protester’s public tweets for weeks before and months after his arrest for disorderly conduct on October 1, 2011. The judge also ruled that the prosecutors could obtain the user information affiliated with the Twitter account he used at the time.
Additionally, the judge found the protester did not have legal standing to challenge the subpoena for information, as the subpoena was directed to Twitter, not him. However, in his ruling, the judge stated that he would review the material before it was turned over to the prosecutor’s office in light of the protester’s privacy concerns.
The protester’s lawyer argued that the timespan was unreasonably broad and even though the tweets were public, the user information associated with the tweets violates the right to free association and privacy.
The protester is planning to appeal.
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