Pleased to learn that a federal criminal grand jury's subpoena to Twitter to get my personal info was quashed by the judge, despite my association with sketchy accounts like @Popehat and @associatesmind, whom the court refused to do any favors.
(Thread ...)

This started in 2017 with a Twitter thread about the interesting case of John Rivello, who was indicted for assault with "a deadly weapon, to-wit: a Tweet", where the tweet contained an allegedly seizure-inducing GIF and was sent to a known epileptic, @kurteichenwald.

Someone replied to the thread with a sarcastic dig at an FBI agent involved in the case (Nathan Hopp), and then someone else replied to that with a smiley-face emoji.
https://t.co/RcOphROvOP
https://t.co/X48C4ORZsI

Because that last, single-emoji reply was by someone the FBI was investigating (in a matter completely unrelated to Rivello), the feds reacted by demanding Twitter hand over all its information on everyone in the thread (for the suspicious act of being replied to by randos).

Twitter, through @PerkinsCoieLLP partner John K. Roche, admirably fought this subpoena on behalf of its users, three times: before a USMJ, then a USDJ, then the MJ again. The result was this sealed 35-page opinion (now