Twitter Subpoena Reveals Law Enforcement Monitoring OWS Via Social Media
Connor Adams Sheets
Twitter has been subpoenaed for information related to Occupy supporters' accounts, proving that law enforcement agencies have been monitoring OWS supporters' activity on social media. The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts is fed up with being mocked, ridiculed, and criticized by faceless Tweeters, so it's taking matters into its own hands.
Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Benjamin A. Goldberger sent a subpoena on Dec. 14 to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco requesting information on a number of accounts and hashtags associated with the Occupy Boston protest movement to assist authorities with an "official criminal investigation."
After receiving the subpoena, Twitter released it to a user listed in the subpoena per company policy, despite the fact that the D.A.'s office requested that "in order to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the ongoing criminal investigation, this office asks that you not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber."
A subpoena issued earlier this month by authorities in Massachusetts reveals that law enforcement is monitoring Occupy Wall Street protesters via social media.
The user, who calls himself Guido Fawkes, is a popular conspiracy blogger whose Twitter handle is @P0isAn0N. He promptly posted the subpoena on Scribd, and it has since gone viral, casting a spotlight on the explosive issue.
Goldberger's move is just one more step in the lengthy tarring and feathering of the Occupy Wall Street movement's supporters sure to come now that winter has arrived and the media are focused on other matters.
Hundreds of protesters face bogus charges for assembling peacefully on the Brooklyn Bridge; Twitter has shut down at least two accounts associated with the Occupy movement, only one of which has since been restored; and now the authorities are asking Twitter to fork over within 14 days privileged information regarding Twitter users' accounts and identification, according to the striking subpoena letter.
The letter states that the request is being made "pursuant to an official criminal investigation being conducted by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and the Boston Police Department," and it seeks "all available subscriber information, for the account or accounts associated with the following information, including IP address logs for account creation and for the period December 8, 2011 and December 13, 2011."
Dec. 8 through Dec. 13 is the period during which the Boston police evicted the Occupy Boston encampment in Dewey Square.
The letter then goes on to list "Guido Fawkes, @P0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak3" as the aforementioned "accounts or accounts associated." The inclusion of @OccupyBoston was likely a mistake, as the account has only Tweeted four times, has been inactive since 2010, and has fewer than 1,300 followers. The @Occupy_Boston account is a much more active stream of the movement's activity, with more than 24,000 followers and 7,000 Tweets and counting.
Guido Fawkes is the username associated with the Twitter handle @P0isAn0N, and #d0xcak3 is a hashtag that was used when the @P0isA0N account Tweeted a link to a Pastebin.com post that lists "home phone numbers, names, & addresses from 40 various ranking police officers from the Boston Police Department. Also their payroll amount from late 2008."
One of the most critical aspects of the brief subpoena is the fact that the #BostonPD hashtag was listed. If the D.A.'s office actually wants the subscription information, IP address and more of every single person who tweeted that hashtag out during the Dewey Square raid, it is asking for information on a vast number of users, thereby infringing on the rights to privacy of at least hundreds of people who were simply exercising their free speech rights. Either that, or the authorities simply don't understand how hashtags work.
Later in the day that Guido Fawkes posted a link to the subpoena letter, he Tweeted at the Boston Police Department to question why he was being targeted.
"@Boston_Police why are you trying to subpoena my account? For free speech? #Umad?" he Tweeted.
The information posted on Pastebin allegedly was culled from servers used by the Boston Police Patrolmens' Association after they were allegedly hacked into by Anonymous members, according to the Boston Herald.
The Boston Police Department post is far from the only such Pastebin page to include sensitive personal information in a move known as "doxing" within the Anon community.
People who associate themselves with the Anonymous movement posted the addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of members of the UC Davis Police Department in the wake of the infamous pepper spraying there, and vital information about companies that oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act has spread across the Web after being posted on Pastebin recently, in just two of many such instances.
But this appears to be the first time a law enforcement agency has been exposed for using the power of the subpoena against an Occupy group in an attempt to pursue a criminal investigation in the wake of such an information dump.
Twitter has not publicly stated yet whether or not it has provided the D.A.'s office with the requested information, but its Guidelines for Law Enforcement state that "In accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, non-public information about Twitter users is not released except as lawfully required by appropriate legal process such as a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process document."
The fact that Twitter released the subpoena to Guido Fawkes should not come as a surprise, as Twitter's guidelines go on to state that "Twitter's policy is to notify users of requests for their information prior to disclosure unless we are prohibited from doing so by statute or court order."
On Dec. 23, Guido Fawkes provided further insight into what will come of the subpoena when he Tweeted that "according to twitter I have 7 days from the time of the email to file a motion to quash."
The Suffolk D.A.'s office and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
In the wake of its release, the targets of the subpoena are gaining the support of civil libertarians, Internet freedom advocates and others who are concerned about law enforcement infringing on the rights of law-abiding Americans.
"Never declare war on the young," Harvey Silverglate, a noted civil liberties advocate and lawyer, told the Boston Herald in a warning to the D.A.'s office. "They'll outlast you. They'll outthink you. They'll outdo you. ... That may be the lesson the D.A.'s office is about to learn."
Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk D.A.'s office, told the Herald that there is no investigation into the protest movement itself, despite the fact that the @OccupyBoston Twitter handle was listed in the subpoena.
But it appears Guido Fawkes has the last word for now. He said in a Pastebin post, which he described in a Dec. 26 Tweet as his "official statement to Boston DA in regards to their subpoena," that "your subpoenas will not shake me. So do whatever you think you can to try and stop Anonymous, but you will learn fast. One of us is not nearly as harsh as all of us. You cannot arrest an idea. You cannot subpoena a hashtag."
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