Twitter earned praise from the ACLU today for refusing to hand over data about an Occupy Wall Street protestor currently being prosecuted by New York authorities.
"This is a big deal," the ACLU said in a statement. "If Internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that Internet companies do so."
Malcolm Harris and several hundred other protestors were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in October after marching onto the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge. In January, the New York County District Attorney's Office requested that Twitter turn over Harris's email address and all tweets posted between Sept. 15 and Dec. 31 to the @destructuremal account.
In late January, Twitter said it would not comply with the subpoena until the Criminal Court ruled on the issue. In an April 20 decision, Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino, Jr. sided with the city, likening Harris's tweets to bank records.
Twitter disagreed and on Monday it filed a motion to quash the judge's order.
"Twitter's Terms of Service make absolutely clear that its users own their content. The Terms of Service expressly state: You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services," Twitter wrote in its filing.
"Moreover, unlike bank records, the content that Twitter users create and submit to Twitter are clearly a form of electronic communication that, accordingly, implicates First Amendment protections as well as the protections of the SCA (Stored Communications Act)."
Twitter argued that asking it to turn over user information violates the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and the SCA, which says that content less than 180 days is only accessible with a search warrant. Furthermore, New York officials did not go through the California courts to make their requests, a violation of the Uniform Act.
Meanwhile, Twitter suggested that complying with the order would result in a torrent of data requests from New York authorities.
"If the Order stands, Twitter will be put in the untenable position of either providing user communications and account information in response to all subpoenas or attempting to vindicate its users' rights by moving to quash these subpoenas itself – even though Twitter will often know little or nothing about the underlying facts necessary to support their users' argument that the subpoenas may be improper," Twitter said. "In no other jurisdiction has Twitter faced this overwhelming burden in response to law enforcement subpoenas, and therefore requests that the Court vacate that portion of its Order denying Mr. Harris' standing to file a motion to quash."
The ACLU said Twitter should be applauded for its effort. "It is so important to encourage those companies that we all increasingly rely on to do what they can to protect their customers' free speech and privacy rights," the group said. "We hope that other companies will do the same thing. Our free speech rights may depend on it."
Twitter posted a link to the ACLU blog post on its @twittercomms feed. "It's not every day the @ACLU says something's a 'big deal,'" the site said.
When asked about Twitter's filing, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan declined comment.
Harris, tweeting under the handle @BigMeanInternet, said he was grateful to Twitter and joked that the filing "bodes well for my request currently in to Twitter PR to borrow one of their giant blue birds and ride it into court."
The move comes about a year after a federal magistrate judge in Virginia ruled that Twitter had to hand over the records of three of its users as part of an investigation into WikiLeaks.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
