Court finds no expectation of privacy in tweets — People v. Harris, 2012 WL 2533640 (N.Y. City Crim. Ct. June 30, 2012)

A New York court ruled last week that Twitter must hand over subpoenaed information about one of its users, including tweets.  Let’s cut to the chase.  The most important statement in the ruling is this: “There can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in a tweet sent around the world.”  The court compared a tweet to shouting out the window — you can’t take back what you said, and anyone who heard you could testify about the statement.

The ruling has drawn criticism from online privacy advocates like the Electronic Freedom Frontier.  On a basic level, the court’s logic makes sense.  The problem is, will the ruling be used to justify refusal to recognize privacy interests in other forms of social media interactions?  Some courts already regard social media content as public per se.

Not all social media content is the same.  And the way content is shared (or not shared) should also be part of the privacy analysis. For instance, a Twitter user could set his account to private to exclude general access to his tweets.  By doing that, the user shows his intent not to communicate to the entire world.  Unlike shouting out a window, private tweets are more like striking a conversation with selected neighbors in your apartment building.

It’s unclear from the ruling if the Twitter user in this case protected his account.  Some commentators say the account was protected.  Regardless, the court made a sweeping statement about the lack of privacy interests in tweets without any attempt to differentiate between public and private Twitter accounts.  Such a broad-brushed approach seems to gloss over the legal significance of privacy settings.