Some records may seem unnecessary to keep for an extended period of time. Perhaps the documents are perceived as outdated or irrelevant. Maybe they are kept in a storage closet for years without any need to pull them out. But, there is a reason why regulations force records to be kept for certain lengths of time. You never know when the information will be needed.

The microblogging site Twitter has agreed to hand over three months worth of recorded tweets to a judge overseeing a case related to Occupy Wall Street. Malcom Harris, one of the protesters involved in last autumn’s movement, sent a number of tweets last year which could imply that he was in knowing violation of police orders, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is hoping to use the information in these tweets against him.

The order to hand over the tweets sparked a heated debate over whether Twitter had to keep this information for a prolonged period of time and if the courts had any right to ask for the company to hand it over. While Harris’ attorney argued that Twitter should not have kept this information, others disagreed with him.

“The tweets themselves are public information, it’s like speaking on a street corner,” Joel Reidenberg, a Fordham Law Professor, said to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “His claim to privacy on the tweets is pretty weak, frankly.”

Twitter probably didn’t know that they would eventually need to hand over these tweets for legal reasons, but the fact that it kept all of its information stored proved to be beneficial for the court systems. But, even though it’s vital to keep information, storing all of it, at least on-site, may not be practical for some companies.

Working with a professional records storage company can help businesses that have to retain data but lack the on-site resources to do so. These companies offer utmost efficiency in retrieving and delivering records, while maintaining best practices pertaining to the security of information.