Twitter To Appeal Turning Over Protester's Messages

angry tapir writes "Twitter plans to appeal a ruling to turn over the once-public tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct, a case the company says threatens the First Amendment rights of its users. A New York Criminal Court judge ruled last month that Twitter should turn over the tweets of Malcolm Harris, since his messages were public and are not the same as an email or a private chat, which would require a search warrant."

Can the Public Become Private?

[ohnocitizen]

Imagine putting a sign on your front lawn. A month later you bring it inside your house. Since the sign was public, does that mean the police no longer need a warrant? If twitter loses this appeal, the answer to that question will be no. It is essentially saying anything made public can never be made private. Now, if someone took pictures of that sign on your lawn, that's another matter. So a snapshot of a public site would be fair game. So much so, I wonder if the police monitor tweets and store potentially interesting ones?

Twitter should be

[Anonymous Coward]

Commended for taking this stance. We should loudly complain when companies like Google and Facebook spit on our data rights but similarly warmly thank the companies that try to protect them. So, thanks Twitter, still prefer to use Statusnet on my own server but at least you're trying or your cunning marketing is working on me.
On a legal note, could it be argued that the user posts messages with a degree of privacy (albeit small) by the understanding they can retract tweets?