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"...Twitter to appear as a Grand Jury witness to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania”." Is there someone here t
by jhancock 16y ago
"...Twitter to appear as a Grand Jury witness to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania”."
Is there someone here that knows what the PA law is that enables a subpoena for uncovering identity in this case? If the long standing interpretation of the U.S. Constitution protects liability from criticizing a public figure anonymous or not (does it?) then how can a PA law, require uncovering identity if there can be no basis for liability once the identity is known?
I've tried to read the embedded subpoena but scribd just shows a spinner telling me its saving trees.
- jdminhbg 16y agoCorbett is best known in PA for prosecuting a number of high-profile cases where legislators used taxpayer-funded state resources for campaign purposes -- i.e., using government-employed staffers to knock on doors, send out campaign mailings, etc. It's possible that there's a similar thing going on here, and he's trying to prove that the accounts are being used from state resources or something.
- _delirium 16y agoI suppose I have a hard time believing that it was just coincidence that the two accounts were criticizing Corbett before he went after them. He really just has the public's interest at heart here, and it has nothing to do with going after his enemies?
- jdminhbg 16y agoThere are presumably hundreds of Twitter accounts criticizing Corbett, and these two hardly have gigantic followings. I'm assuming he's trying to prove something besides "these twitterers don't like me." I doubt he has the public's best interest at heart, except insofar as doing things the public would like will make him more likely to be elected governor. So just randomly subpoenaing two Twitter accounts doesn't seem an effective way of going about that.