Twitter Subpoena for Records Challenged by Lawyers Guild

February 10, 2012, 12:49 PM EST

By Tiffany Kary

(Updates with lawyer comment in third paragraph.)

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s subpoena of Twitter Inc. for information about an Occupy Wall Street protester is improper, the National Lawyers Guild said in a motion to quash the request.

Martin Stolar, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, filed the motion to invalidate Vance’s subpoena on Feb. 6, according to court papers posted on the guild’s website. Vance is seeking information about protester Malcolm Harris, 22, who was arrested with about 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1, according to the motion.

“The subpoena is overbroad, issued for an improper purpose, and constitutes an abuse of court process,” Stolar wrote in court papers.

Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for Vance, declined to comment except to say that prosecutors have previously subpoenaed Twitter.

The National Lawyers Guild is providing free defense for arrested Occupy Wall Street protesters including Harris. The group has provided attorneys for almost 2,200 people since the protests began on Sept. 17, according to a statement.

A telephone call to San Francisco-based Twitter wasn’t immediately returned.

The case is People of the State of New York v. Malcolm Harris, 11-80152, Supreme Court of the State of New York (Manhattan).

–Editors: David Glovin, Glenn Holdcraft

Tiffany Kary in New York at tkary@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net

Article source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-10/twitter-subpoena-for-records-challenged-by-lawyers-guild.html

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Brazil files injunction against Twitter

(AP)  SAO PAULO — A request for an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments’ requests.

Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

“As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down,” Eva Galperin of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Galperin, who described the foundation as “a digital liberties organization,” predicted governments will be taking similar opportunities to censor Twitter traffic.

“Twitter has given these countries the tool and now Brazil has chosen to use it,” she said.

Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues Alves, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office, said the injunction request was filed Monday. He said a judge was expected to announce in the next few days whether he will issue the order against Twitter users.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that tweeted alerts about police operations jeopardize efforts to reduce traffic accidents and curb auto thefts and the transportation of drugs and weapons.

According to the statement, traffic accidents throughout Brazil kill 55,000 people each year and cost the country 24.6 billion reals, or about $14.3 billion.

If the judge rules in favor of the injunction, anyone who violates it could be hit with a daily fine of 500,000 reals ($291,000), the statement said.

San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. said in an email that it had “nothing to share on this issue.”

Under Twitter’s new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there at a government’s request. But it adds that censored tweets will still be seen elsewhere.

Twitter has said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives.

It said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal.

Scientific American

• Brazil files injunction against Twitter

Article source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57374235/brazil-files-injunction-against-twitter/

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Twitter, Weibo Spread Rumors of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un’s Assassination

By Lucas Shaw at TheWrap

Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:53pm EST

Did social media just prematurely kill off the leader of North Korea?

Rumors that Kim Jong-un, the country’s supreme leader, has been assassinated just months after he took power originated on Chinese microblogging service Weibo and have now spread all over Twitter.

Others are reporting that Jong-un, believed to be 28 years old, may be on the run rather than dead, but both reports claim that some kind of coup is taking place.

One person on Weibo wrote (loose translation): “north korea’s biggest leader kim jung un, this morning in beijing time 2:45 am, had his residence broken into and was assassinated by unidentified people, who were shot dead by his bodyguards in korea’s embassy in beijing, vehicles are rapidly increasing in number, and have surpassed 30 of them, this sort of battle formation hasn’t been seen in over two years. please verify this.”

The rumors remain unsubstantiated. However, the reports are beginning to attract a great deal of attention, especially now that a couple of American news outlets including the Atlantic Wire have reported on them.

Weibo is in many ways the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and disseminates news at a rapid pace. People were tipped off that there was something happening that involved Jong-Un, who succeeded his late father Kim Jong-Il, because of the mass of cars parked outside of his resident.

For good reason, many Twitter users are exercising caution, aware that news like this can spread without much to sustain it.

A sample of the dubious tweeters:

“Kim Jong Un apparently assasinated in Beijing. Source: ‘Chinese Twitter’. What does that even mean? One Chinese person’s account? or @China?” AdamThompson1 tweeted.

“Wait for confirmation on Kim Jong Un death rumors. Twitter is also reporting that ‘Jonas Brothers are the best band,’” Matt Binder wrote.

“Rumors from Chinese twitter that Kim Jong Un assassinated this morning in Beijing. pretty unlikely,” Dan Bennett posted.

So did social media spread the news or cause unnecessary hysteria? We will update when the news develops.

Michelle Ong contributed to this report.

Related Articles:  At the Speed of Twitter: The Revolution Spreads to Libya, Bahrain, Yemen Watch North Koreans Weep Uncontrollably Over Kim Jong-Il’s Death (Video) Kim Jong-Il Dead: CNN Brings Back Amanpour, Huckabee Has Caroling on Fox

Article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/10/idUS232818209920120210

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Fake Facebook ‘surfer’ charged

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A married father used phony Facebook profiles to pose as two different Florida surfers to solicit sexually graphic messages and photos from seven teenage girls in western Pennsylvania, and two of the girls eventually agreed to meet for sex with the surfers’ middle-aged “friend” — yet another fake persona he used, the state attorney general said Friday.

William R. Ainsworth, 53, of Mars, was charged Thursday with 68 counts, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and multiple counts of charges that include attempted unlawful contact with a minor, possession of child pornography and criminal use of a computer.

Ainsworth is already in jail in Butler County, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, after he was arrested on similar charges in September, when authorities say he traveled to the home of a 14-year-old girl for sex.

“We quickly discovered that there was much more to this case than the sexual solicitation of one girl,” Attorney General Linda Kelly said in a state before a news conference Friday. “What we found was an intricate web of false Facebook identities that were used to establish online relationships with vulnerable girls, who were then manipulated into sending nude photos to Ainsworth.”

Authorities said the psychological manipulation included messages indicating that the first surfer was killed, so the girls would be more sympathetic and likely to comply with requests from the second “surfer,” who typically introduced the girls to a friend named “Glenn Keefer.” ”Keefer” was essentially Ainsworth’s alter-ego, a 50-something man from Pennsylvania who would offer the girls money for pictures or sex so they could run away to join the surfers, investigators said.

The phony Facebook pages have been taken down, and the girls are not identified in the 68-page criminal complaint. The alleged victims were 13 to 15 years old, although one girl was 12 when the computer contacts began, Kelly said.

“Given the nature and extent of the psychological manipulation, we’re being extremely careful not to re-victimize these girls,” said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for Kelly. He confirmed that Ainsworth is married with children, but would not provide other details.

Ainsworth does not have a phone number listed at the address on the criminal complaint. One other listing for his name in Mars led to a business, where a message was not immediately returned. Ainsworth’s public defender also didn’t immediately return comment.

Ainsworth allegedly posed as surfers “Bill Cano” and “Anthony ‘Rip’ Navari,” and it was the Cano persona who typically first contacted the girls through Facebook, authorities said. Cano claimed to be a runaway from the area, and sometimes claimed to have previously attended their school. Sometimes, though, Cano was contacted by girls he didn’t solicit who saw his profile on their friends’ Facebook pages. Altogether, prosecutors said Ainsworth’s phony profiles garnered him more than 600 Facebook friends.

Cano would ask the girls about their family or school problems and, eventually, allegedly flirt with them or ask for nude photos. Although the charges pertain to just seven girls, investigators have interviewed more than 30 and have gotten more than 18 search warrants to access records of his online contacts with them.

Ainsworth allegedly copied photos of surfers and young men which he passed off as Cano and Navari; Navari would eventually begin contacting the girls as a fellow surfer and sometimes even step-brother of Cano, authorities said. At some point, Navari would tell a girl that Cano was attacked by a mob, in a coma and died.

Once the girls were emotionally attached, Navari would then introduce them to Keefer who, himself or through Navari, would promise to either send the girls money to run away — or send money to support Navari’s living expenses — in exchange for nude pictures or sex.

The Keefer character introduced himself to the girls as a “Sugardaddy looking for Sugarbabies.”

Kelly said the parents of most of the girls didn’t closely monitor their Internet habits and noted some of the girls frequently accessed Facebook away from home. All of the girls were vulnerable due to issues ranging from divorce and custody disputes, substance abuse, or bullying, and Ainsworth exploited those concerns, Kelly said.

Article source: http://www.chron.com/news/article/AG-Pa-man-s-Facebook-surfer-page-lured-teens-3241834.php

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Facebook details Zuckerberg’s $500000 salary, 45% bonus

Here to help you with your Document Management Needs

Read the DocuMentor blog now

Learn More raquo

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-details-zuckerbergs-500000-salary-45-bonus/9002

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Facebook Defriending Murder: Jenelle Potter, Daughter Of Accused Killer, Had …

The daughter of a man who allegedly killed a couple who had defriended her on Facebook had a long history of online feuds that spilled over into real life.

Court documents obtained by The Huffington Post reveal a history of shouting matches, menacing phone calls and threats of violence that pitted 30-year-old Jenelle Potter and her parents against her onetime Internet friends.

The hostilities escalated into bloodshed last week when the woman’s father, Marvin Potter Jr., and an accomplice allegedly shot Billy Payne Jr. and his live-in girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth of Mountain City, Tenn., because they had deleted Jenelle from their list of friends on the social networking site.

“This Facebook thing was her whole life,” Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece told HuffPost. “If you deleted her, they [Potter and her parents] started harassing you. If you ran into them in the grocery store, you had an altercation with them. It was an ongoing thing with these people.”

Reece said his office received complaints from Potter’s parents when their daughter was blocked from other people’s social network profiles.

“These people that we’re dealing with, we’ve dealt with for some time,” Reece said. “But we never seen it go to this extent.”

Payne and Hayworth were found dead at 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 31 by a friend who carpooled to work with Payne, Reece said.

They were each killed by a single gunshot wound to the head, Reece said. Their toddler son was unharmed.

A series of interviews quickly led local cops to Marvin Potter, 60, and Jamie Curd, 38, who’ve both been accused of two counts of first-degree murder and were arraigned on Wednesday. Police say Curd accompanied Potter to the shooting shortly after Payne’s father left for work.

The animosity toward Payne and Hayworth apparently goes back to at least Jan. 13 or 14 when Potter threatened them and two others on Facebook for de-friending her, according to TriCities.com.

There are deep personal connections among the suspects and victims beyond their cyber links. Curd was Payne’s cousin and had romantic feelings for Jenelle Potter, media reports said.

But for reasons that aren’t clear yet, the conflict exploded into open violence.

Agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation were scheduled to interview Jenelle Potter on Thursday.

Before the double murder shook the small community in the northeastern corner of the state, police already knew that Potter — who lives with her parents — was often incensed over perceived online slights against her.

Two women sought restraining orders against Jenelle Potter, and another brought harassment charges against her last year, according to court filings.

“Jenelle Potter, whom I have never met, has been harassing me for months now,” wrote Lindsay Thomas in an affidavit from May 2011, accusing Potter of harassment. “For the past month she has called my phone anywhere from 5-20 times a day … This all started because I deleted her off my Facebook.”

The harassment charge was dismissed last November, according to a court clerk.

A female relative of Potter applied for an order of protection against her in May 2011. The relative claimed in her petition that Potter and a man called her repeatedly over several months, because “I took her off my Facebook.”

A judge dismissed that application, which was the second filed against Potter.

In August 2010, a woman sought a restraining order, saying that Potter had harassed her for months. On one occasion, the woman said that Potter — along with her mother — entered her home, yelled at her and cocked her fist at her as if to punch her. Court records said the two women at one time lived together, but did not mention any online skirmishes.

Potter meanwhile had filed for restraining orders against two other women in 2009 around the same time, claiming that they stalked her for more than a year. In one instance, Potter said that one of the alleged stalkers had removed her from a section on her Myspace profile for her “favorite people.” Potter’s petition includes allegations that she was called names by one of the women during a telephone conversation. She also said that she hid in a Forever 21 store in the local mall after seeing one of the women walk by her with her fist raised.

Those restraining order requests were denied too.

In 2004, Marvin Potter was convicted for lying about his Vietnam War service. Philly.com reported that the Marine wore medals he had not won and posed as a combat hero to give lectures to schoolchildren.

Calls to the Potters’ and Jamie Curd’s homes were not returned. The Huffington Post was unable to reach the women who had filed complaints against Potter or the two whom Potter claimed had stalked her.

“;
var coords = [-5, -72];
// display fb-bubble
FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, ‘top’, {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: ‘clear-overlay’});
});

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/jenelle-potter-facebook-fight_n_1266844.html

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Alderson Gets Funny About the Mets’ Money

Ben Solomon for The New York TimesMets General Manager Sandy Alderson says he writes all his own tweets.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

That seems to be the mind-set of Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson, who displayed his sense of humor Thursday when he posted a pair of well-crafted jibes on his Twitter account satirizing the growing hoopla around the organization’s shaky finances.

Alderson’s experiment in social media began with a bit of mystery. At 3:28 p.m., an account named @MetsGM sent out its first tweet: “Getting ready for Spring Training-Driving to FL but haven’t left yet. Big fundraiser tonight for gas money. Also exploring PAC contribution.”

Twitter is full of fake, unverified accounts, and many on the network questioned whether Alderson was behind the message.

He was. Alderson said he had been amused to see another innocuous factoid — his revelation that he would be driving to Florida for spring training — joked about, dissected and in some cases seriously analyzed by some on Twitter and on blogs as a reflection of the Mets’ finances.

So someone in his office suggested he create a Twitter account to respond, Alderson said, and he thought, “Why not?”

“We wanted to play off the absurdity of it,” Alderson said. “Everything we do is viewed through the prism of our perceived financial situation.”

An hour after his first Twitter message came another: “We’re driving to St. Lucie because our dog (Buddy) doesn’t like to fly. His complaint: Where I sit, no lights and no stews.”

Alderson came to the Mets in 2010 with a reputation as a shrewd thinker. But he has shown flashes of dry humor, too. He said Thursday that he understood some would fail to see the humor in the messages or miss their satire, but that he was not too concerned.

“There are always some that take life way too seriously,” Alderson said. “For those people, it might take longer for my message to get across.”

Despite amassing several thousand followers on Twitter in a matter of hours, Alderson said he was not quite ready to embrace the medium. But he said any future jokes, like those Thursday, would be Alderson originals.

“Oh yes,” he said, laughing. “I write all of my own.”

Article source: http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/alderson-gets-funny-about-the-mets-money/

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Malaysia Detains Saudi Over Twitter Posts on Prophet

Malaysian police detained the writer, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist for the Jeddah-based Al-Bilad newspaper, when he arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Thursday, Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian Minister of Home Affairs, said in a statement.

“The police have contacted their counterpart in Saudi Arabia to determine the next course of action,” Mr. Hussein said.

Rights groups have expressed concern about Mr. Kashgari’s safety after religious conservatives in Saudi Arabia called for him to be arrested and executed after he directly addressed the Prophet Muhammad in a series of posts on Twitter.

Mr. Kashgari’s tweets incited outrage in the conservative Islamic country, where many regarded them as blasphemous, and reportedly prompted the king to call for his arrest. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

More than 13,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.”

According to The Daily Beast, a friend of Mr. Kashgari, who asked not to be named, accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention.

“We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” The Daily Beast quoted the friend as saying. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”

An official from Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who wished to remain anonymous due the sensitivity of the case, said Mr. Kashgari would likely be repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Kashgari would be sent back “because he is on the watch list of Saudi Arabia,” the official said.

Some reports have suggested that Mr. Kashgari wanted to seek asylum abroad. But the foreign affairs official said Malaysia does not grant asylum out of respect for the laws of other countries. “It’s not our practice to grant political asylum,” the official said, adding that the ministry had contacted the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The official said Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, had good diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy did not respond to efforts to seek comment on Friday.

Amnesty International called for Malaysia not to deport Mr. Kashgari, to immediately disclose where he is being held and to grant him access to a lawyer. “We are calling on the Malaysian government to stop any deportation proceedings they may have started,” said Cilina Nasser, a London-based researcher with Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the death threats made against Mr. Kashgari, who issued an apology before fleeing his home country.

In his Twitter posts, which he has since deleted, Mr. Kashgari wrote to the Prophet. “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you,” he wrote in one post, according to a translation published by Agence France-Presse. “I will not pray for you.”

Liz Gooch reported from Kuala Lumpur and J. David Goodman from New York.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/world/asia/malaysia-detains-saudi-over-twitter-posts-on-prophet.html

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Brazil Files Twitter Injunction To Take Down Roadblock Warning Tweets

SAO PAULO — A request for an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments’ requests.

Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

“As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down,” Eva Galperin of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Galperin, who described the foundation as “a digital liberties organization,” predicted governments will be taking similar opportunities to censor Twitter traffic.

“Twitter has given these countries the tool and now Brazil has chosen to use it,” she said.

Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues Alves, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office, said the injunction request was filed Monday. He said a judge was expected to announce in the next few days whether he will issue the order against Twitter users.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that tweeted alerts about police operations jeopardize efforts to reduce traffic accidents and curb auto thefts and the transportation of drugs and weapons.

According to the statement, traffic accidents throughout Brazil kill 55,000 people each year and cost the country 24.6 billion reals, or about $14.3 billion.

If the judge rules in favor of the injunction, anyone who violates it could be hit with a daily fine of 500,000 reals ($291,000), the statement said.

San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. said in an email that it had “nothing to share on this issue.”

Under Twitter’s new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there at a government’s request. But it adds that censored tweets will still be seen elsewhere.

Twitter has said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives.

It said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal.

“;
var coords = [-5, -72];
// display fb-bubble
FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, ‘top’, {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: ‘clear-overlay’});
});

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120209/lt-brazil-twitter/?ref=technology

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Thomas won’t elaborate on Facebook posting

“I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People,’’ Thomas wrote. “This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my rights as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House.’’

Article source: http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey/bruins/articles/2012/02/10/bruins_goalie_tim_thomas_refuses_to_elaborate_on_facebook_posting/

This day in history...


Powered By WPHistory

Next Page »