Boston law enforcement had been investigating cyber attacks against the police department and a police union, reports The Boston Globe. In the process they issued a subpoena on Twitter, requesting information “on the following Twitter subscriber accounts and hashtags: Guido Fawkes, @pOisAnON, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD, and #dOxcak3.” As a result, a hacking enquiry evolved into a first amendment issue that widened to include the Occupy Boston protest.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took up the case, but lost. After nine weeks of secret court hearings, it wrote, “the Suffolk Superior Court has ordered Twitter, Inc., to comply with a state administrative subpoena issued by the Suffolk District Attorney's office on December 14, 2011, seeking personally identifying information for an anonymous Twitter user...”
Twitter has now complied, although there is some confusion about how much detail was handed over. According to Twitter spokesman Matt Graves, “We provided information on a single user.” Jake Wark, spokesman for the District Attorney Daniel F Conley’s office, said: “We requested and received only that information. This is a focused investigation, not a fishing expedition.” Neither side has provided any greater elaboration.
pOisAnON is supposedly a combination of TeamPoison and Anonymous. Conley himself was subsequently targeted, and on Friday 2 March personal details on him and his family were posted to Pastebin (“Daniel F. Conley District Attorney of Suffolk County... Wife... etc...”) – but have since been removed.
The @pOisAnON Twitter account has been suspended. The court has told ACLU that it has no standing and the case cannot be challenged. While being unable to do anything further, ACLU stated, “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.”