Judge makes decision about Twitter use in private session

A Suffolk Superior Court judge made a decision in a private conference during a hearing held yesterday about a Twitter user linked to Occupy Boston, but it will be stayed for 10 days to allow attorneys to appeal, a court official said yesterday.

http://tinyurl.com/chzdojh

Twitter user ‘amused’ by DA’s probe

An apparent target of the Suffolk District Attorney’s Twitter subpoena – part of a probe into alleged hacking of Boston police email – claims to have nothing to do with the case, and finds it entertaining that authorities want the microblogging site to cough up personal information.

“Suffice to say it amused me greatly. I won’t be losing any sleep over it,” the tweeter, who goes by the name GuidoFawkes, told the Herald via email from Wexford, Ireland, last night. “I hadn’t even heard of the Occupy Boston crowd until this blew up. I’m a firm believer in the benefits of free enterprise capitalism and don’t sympathise with their aims.”

http://tinyurl.com/c8wyr7y

(CNN) Occupy Boston activist’s Twitter info subpoenaed

A decision by Massachusetts prosecutors to subpoena the Twitter records of an Occupy Boston activist, as well as records linked to two Twitter hashtags, has free speech advocates up in arms, calling the move a violation of the First Amendment.

http://tinyurl.com/br4nor4

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/30/11” »

Occupy blogger fighting subpoena

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is fighting on behalf of a blogger with apparent Occupy Boston ties who has been subjected to a subpoena that authorities filed through a social media site.

Peter Krupp, an attorney from Lurie and Krupp LLC, who is working on behalf of the ACLU, said the ACLU has moved to have the subpoena, sent to Twitter, quashed on First Amendment grounds. A hearing has been continued to today in Suffolk Superior Court.

http://tinyurl.com/cpchr7k

Suffolk court is occupied by Twitter

A judge is expected to decide today whether to unseal court documents involving prosecutors’ attempts to obtain Twitter user information – including from an account linked to Occupy Boston – as part of a probe into the alleged hacking of Boston police email.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol S. Ball temporarily sealed the case yesterday during a brief conference requested by Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Benjamin A. Goldberger.

http://tinyurl.com/cahke6p

Twitter Subpoena Reveals Boston PD Is After User Information

It appears as though Twitter has ignored request from the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk Massachusetts District Attorney’s office that a subpoena for user information be kept under wraps.

http://tinyurl.com/cab8ncs

Occupy the future – As it evolves, the movement is building on a network laid down in the encampments

After barreling straight ahead for more than three months, Occupy is at its first fundamental turning point. Encampments in city after city have been eviscerated and plowed under. In Boston, after a judge ruled that the Dewey Square Occupation wasn’t protected as free speech, protesters – with the help of police – broke camp and dispersed. All this while critics say the movement has to either take a new form or perish.

But in fact, Occupy has been moving toward that new form for months. Since early October, hundreds of activists from Occupations nationwide have been building connections by phone, e-mail, and Internet relay chats. Now, despite lower public visibility, this network is metamorphosing into something stronger and more sustainable – approaching what renowned group dynamics guru Clay Shirky calls “movement nirvana.”

http://tinyurl.com/bq3poal

Continue reading “The OB Media Roundup 12/29/11” »

BPD Subpoenas Occupy Boston Twitter Accounts, Mistakenly Confuses Handles & Hashtags

Perhaps what’s most interesting about the subpoena, though, is that the BPD and the DA don’t seem to understand Twitter at all. First, “Guido Fawkes” is the user name associated with the account @p0isAn0N, not a separate account. On top of that, @p0isAn0N tweeted earlier today that the BPD actually meant to target @p0isAnon, a different account associated with Anonymous.

Second, @OccupyBoston is an account that has been inactive since March 2010. The subpoena most likely meant to target @Occupy_Boston, the unofficial official account for the Occupy Boston movement. Similarly, for #d0xcak3, they most likely meant user @DoxCak3, who has ties to Anonymous, although it’s unclear.

http://tinyurl.com/d7umsme

Twitter Subpoena Reveals Law Enforcement Monitoring OWS Via Social Media

Twitter has been subpoenaed for information related to Occupy supporters’ accounts, proving that law enforcement agencies have been monitoring OWS supporters’ activity on social media. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts is fed up with being mocked, ridiculed, and criticized by faceless Tweeters, so it’s taking matters into its own hands.

http://tinyurl.com/7jmnh2e

DA cautioned over Twitter subpoenas

A prominent civil liberties -advocate is warning prosecutors to tread lightly as they subpoena information on the Twitter handles linked to the hacking of -Boston police email. The Suffolk District Attorney’s Office asked Twitter to stay mum abut its subpoena for user information, but one user targeted was among the first to post a link to a copy of the -subpoena.

“Never declare war on the young,” said Harvey Silverglate, a noted civil libertarian. “They’ll outlast you. They’ll outthink you. They’ll outdo you. … That may be the lesson the DA’s office is about to learn.”

http://tinyurl.com/83z3twb

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/28/11” »

Profile: People of Occupy Boston – John Murphy

BLAST Magazine: What do you do?

JM: Making sure the movement moves forward. Putting a foot to people’s asses when need be. Simple as that. I would rather be part of history than read about it.

http://tinyurl.com/cwd33re

Occupy Harvard’s walkout on introductory economics class still reverberating

The great irony and tragedy of “intro econ” is that it is at its introductory level that economic theory is both most broadly consumed and most malignantly simplistic. In a recent study, economists at the University of Washington found there to be an “indoctrination effect” for non-majors who take an economics course: on average, they behave more selfishly and hold less regard for others after taking such a course.

Generations of the world’s business people and public policy makers have been nursed on such courses. To gain some insight into why our economies and institutions are crumbling beneath us, then, imagine an engineer equipped with a rudimentary understanding of physics that omits gravity, and a certain above-average disregard for human life not his own. Now imagine him building all the major bridges in the world.

http://tinyurl.com/clbn4yw

Congress Set to Cut Heating Assistance Funds Just as Temperatures Plummet

How many people the United States government is willing to allow to freeze to death this winter remains to be seen, but it is a slap in the face to know that federal funds are apparently available to bail out banks, but not to heat the homes of the American people. It’s going to be a long, hard winter in many parts of the US, and some of us are not going to make it to the other side.

http://tinyurl.com/7mtkaa6

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/27/11” »