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A New York criminal court judge has issued a decision denying Twitter鈥檚 motion to quash a court order requiring it to produce information about one of its users pursuant to a subpoena that the District Attorney鈥檚 Office in Manhattan issued in connection with the prosecution of an Occupy Wall Street protester.

This decision is disappointing. But it鈥檚 not that surprising given that the court had already ruled on many of these issues when the user, Malcolm Harris, filed his own motion to quash. What is surprising, though, is that the court continued to fail to grapple with one of the key issues underlying this case: do individuals give up their ability to go to court to try to protect their free speech and privacy rights when they use the Internet? As we explained in our friend-of-the-court brief last month, the answer has to be no. The United States Supreme Court and courts around the country have repeatedly made clear that individuals whose constitutional rights are implicated by government requests for information to third parties (such as Twitter) have standing to challenge those third-party requests, and there鈥檚 no reason for the result to be different when Internet activities are at issue, regardless of whether individuals 鈥渙wn鈥� their Internet speech or whether the Internet companies 鈥渙wn鈥� it.

The information being requested in this particular subpoena would provide the government with a wealth of knowledge about the user鈥檚 communications and geographic locations for a three-and-a-half month period. The request covers all of the user鈥檚 tweets (no longer available on Twitter), as well as his subscriber information, which includes his personal email address, the IP addresses he used to access Twitter鈥攖hat can be correlated with the user鈥檚 geographic locations over time鈥攁nd the date, time, and duration of each of his Twitter sessions, linked to the content of his tweets. The government shouldn鈥檛 be able to get this sensitive and constitutionally protected information without a warrant and without first satisfying First Amendment scrutiny. Because the D.A. didn鈥檛 do that here, it shouldn鈥檛 be permitted to obtain this information about Mr. Harris鈥檚 Twitter activities.

As we wrote when we first found out about Twitter鈥檚 motion, Twitter should continue to be applauded for stepping in and challenging this particular subpoena. The unfortunate reality, however, is that Twitter and other Internet companies cannot challenge every one of these requests for information about one of their millions of users. That is why it is so important that individuals be allowed to go to court to protect their own rights, and that is why this court鈥檚 decision is so wrong.

We鈥檙e hopeful that the next court that takes a look at this case or another similar case will recognize that. Stay tuned . . .