The NYPD will subpoena Twitter today, forcing the social media site to identify a psycho poster who is threatening a “Batman”-style shooting rampage at a Broadway theater.
“This s–t ain’t no joke yo — I’m serious, people are gonna die like aurora,” the lunatic scrawled in one tweet, referring to last month’s massacre at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater during a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.
STORY: Hand It Over! NYPD To Subpoena Twitter Over User’s Threat To Shoot Up Theater
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Twitter will now cooperate with police to apprehend this mad man before innocent lives are lost.
Yesterday, detectives immediately sent an “emergency request” to Twitter in an effort to unmask the sicko — but the social media site flat-out refused it in an e-mail the next day.
“We appreciate the timeliness and sensitivity of this matter, and have reviewed the reported Twitter account,” the e-mail said. “While we do invoke emergency-disclosure procedures when it appears that a threat is present, specific and immediate, this does not appear to fall under those strict parameters as per our policies.”
The social media website has been under tremendous pressure from law enforcement over the past year to provide user communications and account information in ongoing investigations throughout the nation.
In the past, in cases such as ones involving Occupy Wall Street protesters, Twitter has argued that handing over such information would constitute a violation of its users’ terms of service, as well as a violation of the “search and seizure” provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But in the wake of the Aurora tragedy that killed 12 people in a movie theater and left dozens of others injured, pressure on Twitter has reached a new level of urgency.
The NYPD served a subpoena on Twitter for more information on the individual who allegedly promised to unleash mayhem on the Longacre Theatre in New York City.
Watch what you say on these websites, Big Brother is watching.
Hopefully, this time, a tragedy was prevented.
