Twitter chief admits legal challenges leaving firm 'between rock and hard place'

London - Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo has said the micro-blogging firm will continue to fight the legal challenges brought against its users by legal officials who want access to their archived tweets.

Costolo's comments come after Twitter was forced to surrender the tweets sent by Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street protester, to prosecutors, after Harris was accused of misconduct during the protests on Brooklyn Bridge in New York last year.

"We strongly believe it's important for us to defend our users' right to protest the forced publication of their private information," The Guardian quoted Costolo, as saying, during the Online News Association's annual conference in San Francisco.

According to the paper, he said the company had spent a large amount of its money and time for legal resources to fight the Harris' case and was disappointed that it was forced to hand over the information in advance of an appeal.

"We have been put between a rock and a hard place," he said.
 
Costolo acknowledged that Twitter faced wrangles over free speech all over the world and it did not have a "one-size-fits-all solution", the paper said.

"There are things you can't say about Attaturk in Turkey because they are illegal but people hop on Twitter and say these things," he added.