Malcolm Harris, the Occupy Wall Street protester who fought an extended battle over ownership of his potentially incriminating tweets, pleaded guilty today to disorderly conduct more than a year after he and hundreds of other demonstrators were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Twitter took up Harris’s cause, arguing that it could not be made to turn over his deleted messages, but gave in after a judge threatened to fine the company. “Not going to jail. Took a last-minute plea so we can move to appeals,” Harris tweeted today (from his new account). “Anyone know a non-profit where I can serve some time?”
An appeal could still take on the specifics of social media searches, the larger issue in the case, but it was too late for Harris’s own supposedly relevant dispatches. Exposed in court for the first time, the subpoenaed tweets said simply, “We took the bridge,” and “they tried to stop us,” proof Harris willingly broke the law, according to prosecutors. As for his feelings on Breaking Bad, plans for brunch, and whatever other nuggets were held in Harris’s self-described chronicle of “nonsense,” the world may never know.
