Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Occupy Protester's Twitter Account

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http://www.thenation.com/article/166273/manhattan-district-attorney-subpoenas-occupy-protesters-twitter-account

Raising the stakes in the government’s battle with Occupy Wall Street, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has subpoenaed the Twitter account of an Occupy supporter who was one of the approximately 700 protesters arrested while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011. Malcolm Harris was charged with disorderly conduct, a violation that is not a crime per se, but is the lowest level offense in the New York State Penal Law.

Harris, a 23-year-old writer, has been alerted by Twitter’s San Francisco offices that they have received a subpoena from the New York prosecutor, seeking “any and all user information including e-mail address, as well as any and all tweets for the period 9/15/11-12/31/11” for his account.

According to a complaint signed by Police Officer Thomas Manning, Harris, “with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance and alarm and recklessly creating a risk thereof, obstructed vehicular and pedestrian traffic.” While Manning did not observe any of this himself, he was informed by a Sgt. Brian Byrnes that Harris was “standing in a group of approximately six-hundred individuals in the traffic lane of the above-listed location…[and] obstructed vehicular traffic and created a public disturbance/inconvenience in that it prevented all vehicles from being able to use the roadway.”

To prove the disorderly conduct charge against Harris requires the prosecution to establish only the allegations in the complaint—that is, that at the time and place of the arrest, he was present in the roadway and intentionally interfered with traffic. They would not need the contents of months of Tweets, including any private direct messages, and Harris’s e-mail address (which would then enable them to subpoena Harris’s e-mail service provider) to meet their burden of proof.

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1. "Disorderly conduct" is one of the most abused "violations" out there

It seems like D.O. is pretty much whatever the cop says it is, and is used in cases where they can't find a real crime committed and just don't like someone's attitude.