Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. wants the tweets of Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris. That, he contends, will disprove Harris' assertion that the police told the protesters to head to the Brooklyn Bridge and then arrested them, reports Reuters. Those tweets are no longer online.
Until today in People v Harris the company Twitter has refused to turn them over. But then they caved since they face a large fine. Harris filed an appeal. Twitter argues that the users of its social media network own their posts and the government should not demand them through this middleman. If the government keeps doing this, given the time cost of complying with the demand, Twitter could be shouldering a heavy financial burden.
This has become one of the closely watched cases involving Internet law.
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