Twitter Surrenders One User’s Data to Police Investigation

Three months after being subpoenaed by a Boston district attorney, Twitter has handed over user data from one account that tweeted data allegedly obtained by hacking into police websites.
The district attorney of Suffolk County had subpoenaed Twitter in December, requesting “all available subscriber information” for @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak. The subpoena also included the name Guido Fawkes, which is associated with the @p0isAn0n account.
On December 28, after the subpoena was issued, @p0isAn0n tweeted: “Haha. Boston PD submitted to Twitter for my information. Lololol? For what? Posting info pulled from public domains? #comeatmebro.”
Twitter spokesman Matt Graves told Boston.com that @p0isAn0n is the only account for which Twitter ultimately provided any information, and he declined to comment when the website asked about how Twitter dealt with the request for information related to the Occupy Boston account.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was among the most public opponents of the subpoena, and it challenged the measure in court. All court proceedings and documents involved in that challenge were sealed.
A judge ruled last week against the challenge and Twitter complied with the decision, according to Boston.com.
“We continue to believe that our client has a constitutional right to speak, and to speak anonymously; and that this administrative subpoena both exceeded the scope of the administrative subpoena statute and infringed our client’s rights under the First Amendment,” ACLU lawyer Peter Krupp said in a statement Thursday. “With the turnover of these documents any subsequent review of these issues will be moot.”
Should Twitter be obligated to hand over information about its users to law enforcement? Do you see such requests as necessary to investigations or as attacks on free speech? Let us know in the comments.