There is no Twitter message privacy. This probably means there is no Facebook message privavcy or message privacy on other services. This is a from a ruling by New York State Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr., specifically about Twitter message privacy.
The widely believed (though mistaken) notion that any disclosure of a user's information would first be requested from the user and require approval by the user is understandable, but wrong. While the Fourth Amendment provides protection for our physical homes, we do not have a physical "home" on the Internet. What an Internet user simply has is a network account consisting of a block of computer storage that is owned by a network service provider. As a user, we may think that storage space to be like a "virtual home," and with that strong privacy protection similar to our physical homes. However, that "home" is a block of ones and zeroes stored somewhere on someone's computer. As a consequence, some of our most private information is sent to third parties and held far away on remote network servers. A Twitter user may think that the same "home" principle may be applied to their Twitter account. When in reality the user is sending information to the third party, Twitter. At the same time the user is also granting a license for Twitter to distribute that information to anyone, any way and for any reason it chooses.
This post on Twitter message privacy came to me from Greg Kirkpatrick, a very good Microsoft Small Business Specialist at greg@ComputerMagic.CC (561-212-6094). Greg is a South Florida computer professional in flait@googlegroups.com. This message board, and our monthly meetings, are very worthwhile. I especially like Greg's email footer,
"Like other states, Florida has a tax on stupid people.
It's called "The Lottery".
