Privacy Rights in the Digital Age: Twitter Files Appeal in Social Media Case

By Karla Robinson
August 31, 2012

An April ruling set the precedent that all tweets belong to Twitter and users have no privacy rights in their Twitter accounts. This week, Twitter filed an appeal. GigaOM reports the main arguments of the appeal:
“Twitter users have a property right in the content they post (citing a case in which a photographer posted a Haiti earthquake photo to Twitter).”
“Twitter users should have the same right to challenge subpoenas as Gmail users.”
“Twitter users have a Fourth Amendment privacy right in their accounts.”
“The judge made an error by ruling that all of Harris’ tweets, including the deleted ones, were public.”
The case referenced in the fourth argument above centers on Occupy Wall Street protestor Malcolm Harris who was arrested after his Twitter information was subpoenaed. Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. rejected efforts to quash the subpoena. He likened Twitter to shouting on the street, saying “the street is an online, information superhighway, and the witnesses can be the third party providers like Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, Pinterest.”
The ACLU has vowed support for Twitter’s appeal: “Under the First and Fourth Amendments, we have the right to speak freely on the Internet, safe in the knowledge that the government can’t get information about our speech without a warrant and without satisfying First Amendment scrutiny.”

No Comments Yet