Judge Napolitano Takes On Twitter Privacy Ruling In Occupy Wall Street Case
Judge Andrew Napolitano stopped by the curvy couch on Tuesday, giving his take on a new ruling concerning whether or not we actually own our own Tweets.
Describing a case concerning Occupy protesters arrested during a march on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall, fill-in host Eric Bolling explained that a judge ruled that “if you post the Tweet just like if you scream out a window, there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Calling the case “groundbreaking,” Judge Napolitano explained that “it’s the first case in the United States of America in which a judge has said because I Tweet to the three of you as opposed to e-mail just to Eric that there’s no expectation of privacy in the Tweet.” Although, he added, “I think that this will be appealed to a higher court.”
This was an Occupy protester, he reminded the show’s hosts, and the government wanted all of his Tweets, regardless of their content or to whom they had been issued.
“There’s a little thing called the Fourth Amendment,” he continued, “that until yesterday — and I shouldn’t say until yesterday because this case only applies, this ruling only applies in this case. It has no effect anywhere else because of the level of the court. If this were the Federal Court of Appeals in New York, it would apply in a couple of states. It just applies to this judge in this courtroom. But before that, the rule would have been the government has to show a reason for the Tweets. It can’t just ask for them and the reason has to be some evidence of crime involved in the language of the tweets.”
“I blame Jefferson,” joked Brian Kilmeade. “Why didn’t he anticipate the rise of Twitter? And, therefore, we’re stuck with this problem on our hands.”
“Last time I spoke to Jefferson, he didn’t want to talk about this,” Napolitano played along.
Have a look, via Fox News:
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