(MintPress) – The first ever “transparency report” released Monday by Twitter reveals a marked increase in the number of government requests to monitor, and in some cases remove, citizen tweets. The micro blogging site has reportedly received more government requests in the first half of 2012 than in all of 2011, according to Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s legal policy manager.
Leading the way was the United States, with more than 600 requests, according to the report. While far less prevalent, U.S. courts have occasionally requested Tweets and related Internet correspondence, should it be relevant to a case. One such instance of a court requesting the right to see Twitter posts occurred during the recent hearing of Malcolm Harris.
The Malcolm Harris case
On Monday, a New York judge ordered Twitter to hand over Tweets made by Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protester. Although there is no information on the number of tweets requested, the court has made clear that it plans to review three months worth of Harris’ tweets made Sept. 15-Dec. 15, 2011. Harris, along with approximately 700 others, were involved in the now infamous “Brooklyn bridge” incident October of last year.
OWS protesters who marched on the bridge claim the action was sanctioned by police. However, after receiving contradictory instructions from New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, the protesters were informed that they were taking part in an illegal demonstration and were arrested en masse for the act.
Harris was one of many arrested for disorderly conduct during the incident, an event that protesters say was a clear, unjustified affront by the NYPD during the nascent stages of the OWS movement.
The 11-page ruling made clear that tweets posted publicly nullify any expectation of privacy. The judge said Monday, “If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Continuing he added, “The constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts. What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.”
A Twitter company spokesperson for the micro-blogging site was displeased by the ruling, offering, “We are disappointed in the judge’s decision and are considering our options. Twitter’s terms of service have long made it absolutely clear that its users ‘own’ their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights.”
Legal rights groups, including the The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have also weighed in on the issue, hoping that the ruling would be overturned. The ACLU argues that the citizens have a right to privacy and should not have their online correspondence seized by courts.
Government surveillance and censorship
While the Harris case is not recorded specifically in the recent Twitter transparency report, the ambiguous, contested space of Twitter, Facebook and the Internet more generally has raised concerns for some who believe that government surveillance and court orders could limit the rights of internet users.
The United States led the number of government requests in the transparency report, making 679 of the 849 requests for user information. In 75 percent of the cases involving U.S. requests, Twitter gave “all or some” of the requested information.
Trailing far behind the U.S., was Japan with 98 requests. Canada and the United Kingdom each submitted 11 requests during 2011.
As many have pointed out in the wake of the report, a number of countries have gone so far as to ban the service altogether. China, for example, forbids citizens from using Twitter, preventing citizens from legally accessing the site. There are however, similar Chinese sites which provide much the same service as the American company.
The online blog Chilling Effects has begun to follow and report cases of Internet censorship, particularly by various governments. The blog has set bold goals for the future, saying, “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.”
More recently, during the height of anti-regime protests in Egypt last year, the Mubarak government shut down Twitter and Facebook, seeing these sites as helping protesters organize. While the largest street protests occurred after these restrictions were in place, the organizing role social media played in the Egyptian revolution is undeniable.