Twitter Can't Keep Protestor's Data From Cops 105
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "On Monday, Twitter published its first-ever Transparency Report, detailing how many times governments around the world demanded its users' information and asked it to remove content. The results show that the U.S. government asked for more Twitterers' private data than all other governments combined: 679 requests in the first half of 2012, of which 75% were at least partially granted. That's more than all of last year, with half of 2012 still to go. Within hours, the issue of governments helping themselves to Twitter users' private data was illustrated in the case of Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street protester who had his Twitter data subpoenaed in a criminal case for 'disorderly conduct.' Twitter had fought the request, which will help prosecutors identify Harris as the tweets' source. But a Manhattan judge ruled that users have no expectation of privacy for their Twitter data."
If Twitter doesn't want to have to provide data .. (Score:5, Insightful)
... then why does it save users' messages after they're deleted?
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... then why does it save users' messages after they're deleted?
Because business people have this belief that the more data they can keep on their users, the more information they'll have to find some pattern somewhere to make money.
Marketing data miners are like those people who spend their lives trying to decipher the Bible to find the name or number of God. The more data, the more informaiton they can use to manipulate the consumer to spend their money on crap - make impulsive purchases - or so they wish.
When people get numbers in front of them, numbers seem to this
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When people get numbers in front of them, numbers seem to this way hypnotizing them. No one ever asks, "What do these nuumbers means? Are they relevant? Do they even mean anything?"
And they are told that if they sign the cheque it will make the bad numbers go away, and the good numbers come back. The world is full of people who don't care what the numbers are supposed to mean, all they care about is that the numbers on the clock say 5pm, or the numbers on the calendar say "week-end", and the numbers in their bank accounts lull them into a false sense of security.
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Business people, really that is where you put the blame? Wholly fuck you people are ignorant! Look at who is requesting the data and what it's being used for! That a business can make money from it is secondary, but yeah I'm sure that's in the plan as well.
Re:If Twitter doesn't want to have to provide data (Score:5, Insightful)
Because their entire value proposition is helping advertisers in deciding what to sell people.
For example, if somebody is talking a lot about legalizing pot, advertisers will know that they'll have more luck selling Timothy Leary books, Bob Marley or Grateful Dead albums, and Che Guevara T-shirts than they will selling Glenn Beck books, Christian rock albums, and suits and ties.
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You are more likely to go to Miami than someone who has never been there. Maybe not you in particular but the group of people who have been there before - and that's all the advertisers have to go on.
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I didn't say they were any good at doing what they claimed to do, but they make their money by convincing advertisers they're good enough. And for that, the more data the better, regardless of whether the user said they wanted to get rid of it.
Re:selling Timothy Leary books, Bob Marley... (Score:2)
For example, if somebody is talking a lot about legalizing pot, advertisers will know that they'll have more luck selling Timothy Leary books, Bob Marley or Grateful Dead albums, and Che Guevara T-shirts than they will selling Glenn Beck books, Christian rock albums, and suits and ties.
On that theme, Bob Marley tea [marleysmellowmood.com] is pretty good.
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Because their entire value proposition is helping advertisers in deciding what to sell people.
For example, if somebody is talking a lot about legalizing pot, advertisers will know that they'll have more luck selling Timothy Leary books, Bob Marley or Grateful Dead albums, and Che Guevara T-shirts than they will selling Glenn Beck books, Christian rock albums, and suits and ties.
As a life long stoner I find it offensive that you think I want Timothy Leary books, Bob Marley or Grateful Dead albums, or whatever Che Guevara T-Shirts are.
Seriously, is that what you think of stoners?
It's offensive.
Okay, Bob Marley has good music, but just because we are stoners, we are NOT hippies!!!!
Hippies suck. They had their chance, and they fucked it up so bad, it's not even funny. Alot of those hippies became yuppies and when Reagen said Trickle Down Economy, apparently they were still high
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> ppls in US or Sweden or Japan or something don't have to worry
Unless you had consensual sex without a condom in Sweden, which apparently is enough to get you extradited from the UK for questioning. Oh, minor sex-infraction plus you pissed off the US.
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> ppls in US or Sweden or Japan or something don't have to worry
Unless you had consensual sex without a condom in Sweden, which apparently is enough to get you extradited from the UK for questioning. Oh, minor sex-infraction plus you pissed off the US.
Under the new Corporate Law, yes, having sex without buying a condom and using it is against the law. Any time you can buy something from a corporation for anything, you must, or suffer the full effect of the law!!!!!
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There's no requirement in the US to do so, but legislation has been proposed to do just that - and most ISPs do it anyway. Preemptively storing everyone's communication in case you might have a legitimate (says a judge) claim to confiscate .00000001% of it is wrong IMO.
Bill of Rights in the 21st Century (Score:3, Interesting)
Stories like this make me want to prepare a list of news stories paired up w/ amendments from the Bill of Rights, showing how far away we've gotten from the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
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the right to anonymous free speech.
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Freedom of speech is not Freedom to be a idiot. When you make your bed, you must lie in it. If you cannot handle the outcome of your own words perhaps it would be best to shut your mouth and forget about saying it (or in this case typing it).
It falls under the whole idea of personal responsibility, which I know is hard for people to accept today, its all about "me, me, me" and no thought process involved when it comes to thinking ahead of what your getting yourself into.
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Well there is a legitimate argument to be made that no place does it say the government is empowered to prevent you from being an idot either. The First Amendment does not say anything about disorderly conduct. The whole "fire in a crowded theater" argument is entirely the invention of the Supreme Court, as its its own power to decide Constitutional questions at all for that matter.
I know the court disagrees but in my reading of the first Amendment I see nothing but pretty absolute language and no real ro
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The First Amendment does not say anything about disorderly conduct. The whole "fire in a crowded theater" argument is entirely the invention of the Supreme Court, as its its own power to decide Constitutional questions at all for that matter.
And this is the problem the Freedom of Speech is not about you being able to say anything you want, its about you being able to voice your opinions and beliefs freely without government interference.
In addition to this, such things as incitement of illegal actions, libel, slander and obscenity has never been protected by the right of freedom of speech in any country. Long before the first amendment was written, in English Common law, there were limitations, and these limitations were kept in the American
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I am aware of that history, and I understand why they did what they did. The thing is codified law overrides precedent and common law. The first amendment does not say except when speech is "incitement of illegal actions, libel, slander and obscenity."
The Constitution is a law code I think it should be treated as such. If something is unworkable, then there is an amendment process. There are phrases in the Constitution that allow wiggle room like "due process of law", so congress, or a judge using commo
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I am aware of that history, and I understand why they did what they did. The thing is codified law overrides precedent and common law.
I think you have it backwards, Common Law IS the law of the land, based on "practical" applications of what was written into law both past and present, aka the application of "codified law" which includes all laws passed by a government with respect to the needs and requirements of the people in the society.
This is why the Supreme Court in Common law countries can strike down, parts or all of a "codified law" that was passed by the government which does not pass their approval with regards to how society
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Freedom of speech is not Freedom to be a idiot. When you make your bed, you must lie in it. If you cannot handle the outcome of your own words perhaps it would be best to shut your mouth and forget about saying it (or in this case typing it).
Why not? So if I want to speak out against a government policy, and the outcome of that speech is being put on a watch list, having my house searched and my taxes audited, I should just shut up? Freedom of speech means not being targeted by the authorities just for what you say. Sometimes that requires anonymity.
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Why not? So if I want to speak out against a government policy, and the outcome of that speech is being put on a watch list, having my house searched and my taxes audited, I should just shut up?
No one said you had to shut up, but you have to accept the consequences. If your words mean that you must use the anonymity that the internet provides, then perhaps your words mean nothing to you and they are best not said.
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If you cannot handle the outcome
What you advocate here is free speech Soviet Russia style! The speech is free, but then you get sent to Siberia labor camp or executed by a firing squad. No, I am not exaggerating, this is how it actually worked during Stalin times, and is happening in Russia today, in a different form. Today Russian journalists are being assassinated for free speech, because the government does not want to be involved directly.
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What you advocate here is free speech Soviet Russia style! The speech is free, but then you get sent to Siberia labor camp or executed by a firing squad. No, I am not exaggerating, this is how it actually worked during Stalin times, and is happening in Russia today, in a different form. Today Russian journalists are being assassinated for free speech, because the government does not want to be involved directly.
And yet the people in Russia, both past and present are willing to take that risk to spread their words and their beliefs, knowing full well they face consequences, because they know their beliefs are important to them.
Verses the Occupy movement, and their supporters who use anonymity over the internet to open their yap without thought, without consequences, because they are spoiled kids who grew up and realized the world won't hand them honey and nuts every time they stub their toe on something.
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I think you are the spoiled kid here, who thinks that freedom is a god given right. It is not. Freedom of speech is one of the few thin barriers separating US from plunging into a Nazi style dictatorship, and when the Government starts to round up those who spoke against it, it smells very foul.
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I personally agree with you that anonymous speech has an important role... but the founding fathers understood very well that signing the declaration of independence could very well get them killed. They were ready to face the consequences of their not-anonymous speech.
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I correct myself:
"The history of anonymous political free speech in America dates back to our founding. The seminal essays found in “The Federalist Papers” were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the nom de plume of “Publius” although this was not confirmed until a list of authorship complied by Hamilton was posthumously released to the public. "
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Please review the history of printings of the Declaration of Independence.
The first printing by John Dunlap only bore the names of John Hancock, Charles Thomson and the printer.
It wasn't until Mary Katherine Goddard printed a 2 column version that there was a printed copy which listed all of the signers.
Also, _Common Sense_ was published anonymously, w/ John Adams frequently being accused of being the author.
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In the legal interpretations of the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights:
``...the right to anonymous political free speech has been addressed by the Supreme Court. Most notably in the cases of Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995).''[1]
William
1 - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html [washingtonsblog.com]
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Since the Founders who wrote of the importance of free speech and the government they envisioned to go along with it often did so under pen names and in anonymous pamphlets so as not to be executed, I'm pretty sure they understood the significance and importance of anonymous and free political speech.
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Anyway the 1st amendment applies to the government, not to private companies. Why do so many people seem to not understand that?
Because they seem to get most of the other protections and rights that a person would, why not speech too? /sarcasm
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Twitter is the technological incarnation of narcissism.
Tweets is not all they ask for. (Score:2)
Be careful though, when they ask for information to Twitter they're not asking simply for tweets. They probably want login info, ips, private messages, etc.
And USA, many times uses gag orders to prevent the services from alerting its users about the "snooping". Twitter successfully contested the right to alert an Icelandic pm, the creator of tor and some other people (who were involved with wikileaks one way or another) but they had to release the data anyway, in the end (If I recall correctly).
twitter isn't for private data (Score:1)
If you want something to be private, don't post it to twitter, facebook, myspace, and so on.
Use a private, encrypted communication channel. Private communication is NOT what social networks are for. They're for the opposite of that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Or on CNN, for that matter.
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Everything is recorded.
Which means nothing if what they record is encrypted.
Electronic communication can be quite private, you just have to use private means. Twitter is not one.
Email CAN be, if you encrypt it end to end. IMs CAN be, if you encrypt them end to end.
This is why everyone moving to services like FB or Twitter is a bad idea. IT's not in their best interest to give you private communications. If you run everything on your own computer, then YOU get to decide whether it should be private or not, and someone recording
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Electronic communication can be ...private... Twitter is not one.
Except the constitution was written to protect the people from an oppressive government. And that means it was written expressly to protect Malcolm Harris from persecution. There is a protection both for the "freedom of speech" and "privacy of correspondence". What more can you possibly ask for? Do you want the constitution to literally spell "privacy of tweets should not be infringed upon", or something?
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Umm, you are aware that Twitter is not the government, right?
Twitter is the envelope, the mailman, the messenger boy, the pigeon. Nobody says that a pigeon is the government. I think you are confusing the messenger boy with the entity that intercepts him, opens your letters, then arrests and sentences you to death by fire.
entire purpose of making your messages public
If it were public then why would the government need to subpoena? I suspect it was not public, but rather private to people who subscribed to the tweets. To make an analogy:
You are in Soviet Russia, 1937. You tell your friends at a gathering that Communism has some issues. The government "subpoenas" everything you say. You are sent to Gulag, where you spend the rest of your miserable life.
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Everything is recorded.
Which means nothing if what they record is encrypted.
Not true. Remember the news a while ago about the new gigantic NSA facility in Utah?
Yeah. They're storing everything you say and do online. Been doing it for years. They're already able to crack most encryption. And twenty years from now, they'll be able to crack any encryption you used today.
There is literally no place to hide. If you truly want privacy, do NOT use the Internet. Don't use any cellular phones, either.
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Which means nothing if what they record is encrypted.
The NSA now takes a "store now, crack later" approach. That's what their new Utah data center is for.
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I'd always, since the nineties, known that you should never say anything in an email (text/tweet/facebook etc.) or phone call, that you wouldn't want to hear repeated in an open courtroom.
Entered as Exihibit A against the alleged hacker, terrorist, drug trafficker, pimp, and child abuser, known as "SteamisheFan". For over two decades this sophisticated and determined criminal has admittedly been using counter-surveillance techniques likely learned in an Al-Qaeda training camp to conceal his nefarious plots.
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Posting AC because they have so many spiteful shills on slashdot
And you're afraid of...what?
Twitter (Score:1)
That's why... (Score:2)
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False registration information isn't going to help when they have a full record of IP addresses you accessed the site from. Most Twitter users also either log in from their phone or use SMS to post tweets, which both result in Twitter having your phone number.
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that's why I tweet from behind seven proxies
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You can chain web proxies like hidemyass pretty easily. You have to make sure your browser does not run any scripts or plugins, and you are good.
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I think it's safe to assume this guy wasn't using a proxy even to mask his location. Not that he should have to, but if you want what you're talking about it should be done.
Trending topic (Score:2)
Well, it might just be a sign of the government being slow on the uptake of new things. Twitter has been around for what, 6 years now, and in the common lexicon for maybe 3?
But at least Twitter desires at least the appearance of not wanting to kneel to the government's whims on this. Lets see the same numbers for Verizon or Comcast. I am sure we would find those numbers appalling.
Also, it shows that 25% were not granted. Does it show for what reason, were they illegal req
I am afraid the judge is right. (Score:2)
I think the whole point of Twitter is that it is an electronic soapbox -- it is a place where you very publicly announce things. There really is no expectation of privacy.
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It's sad that protesters are always so technologically ill-equipped - using social networking sites, relying on cell comms, etc.
You know what would be a worthwhile software project? A simple kit to allow a group to set up an encrypted wifi mesh network that hosts a web-based communication service (on a freenet-like system, that can be mirrored to an online darknet site) that can provide Internet access through darknets to clients (where Internet access is available) and is resistant to any mesh node machine
No expectation? (Score:2)
> But a Manhattan judge ruled that users have no expectation of privacy for their Twitter data."
I realize that most users don't read the fine print, but you'd think the published Privacy Policy [twitter.com] might lead someone to believe that there's a clear agreement betwee Twitter and the users that there's at least some stuff considered "private"...
'splain this to me (Score:1)
I don't understand the ruling. Does the government have to get a court order or not, and if not, why the hell not?
Do you clods in the prosecutors office not realize the larger historical context of why We The People did not authorize government to intrude without court orders?
It's nice to fancy we are perfecting ourselves as a democracy and that such fears are old-school (see also arguments in favor of gun control) but history offers no such assurance. We prefer to not let the tools of tyrrany germinate.
I
If you're trying to stay under the radar.. (Score:2)
If you're trying to stay under the radar, then you should consider NOT being on twitter!
Or perhaps accessing your account via a pseudonym, a public computer, you get the idea.
Really? (Score:2)
And why they want to really extradite Assange? (Score:2)