Most of this fruitless discussion seems to be between people who have just read the TPM article (or scanned to the pull-quote from the judge), and those who are

Most of this fruitless discussion seems to be between people who have just read the TPM article (or scanned to the pull-quote from the judge), and those who are more familiar with the case. Here's an ArsTechnica article that communicates the issues quite clearly: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/ny-judge-compels-twitter-to-reveal-user-data/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/ny-judge-compels-... The subpoena is for all public and private information Twitter has for a period of three months and a half. The charge is for disorderly conduct at one point during this period. The EFF and Twitter are pointing out that the prosecutor is going on a fishing expedition. The “shouting from a window” analogy the judge made is irrelevant.