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U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#51

Post by searchableguy »

cercatrova wrote: post #25
Mary-Jane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when? Governments have a history of greed, corruption, and trampling on the rights of it's people for it's own gain. Ref: any history book on any country, ever

The problem is all large organizations strive for power. One can be more easily changed than the other, at least in democratic republics. Corporations are more like autocracies, their leadership can't be changed. One can say that corporations derive power from customers, but this is not necessarily so. As they grow larger, they can necessarily control user habits through psychological means. The government can too bu…

The only difference is that someone proposed an ideal when talking about government, but not for companies. Why not use the ideal free market here as well?

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#52

Post by crispyambulance »

gonzo41 wrote: post #29
nabla9 wrote: post #8

We learn from Snowden leaks that Twitter was the only major platform that refused to participate voluntarily with PRISM surveillance. Twitter only complied with legitimate FISA requests they were not able to refuse. Microsoft,Yahoo, Google, AOL, Skype and Apple all did more than legally required.

Everyone else you mentioned runs a non trivial business that interacts with the government significantly. I know trump get's a lot of action on twitter but the next guy won't be using it for the main means of comms. It's great that twitter took a stand, but if that company failed everyone would easily replace it. Twitter is toy.

> Twitter is toy.

Well I guess it depends on what your definition of "toy" is. I think all popular social media platforms deserve careful consideration. They have a colossal impact.

It's more interesting to consider what, exactly, government surveillance can be used for.

And really, "James Bond" style villainous plots aren't what we _really_ need to worry about. The real weapon in these platforms is disinformation campaigns-- and the actual actors behind such campaigns (as well as anyone else who is paying money to influence any user) should be revealed to the public.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#53

Post by SidenKniffsBids »

nabla9 wrote: post #27
sneak wrote: post #4

Can we just ponder for a moment that we are being asked to believe that anything Twitter does or does not do could pose an existential threat to the United States? “National security” is a sham now and has been a sham every other time it has ever been used as a blanket override for human rights. Human rights to free expression are more important than any nation. This is just government spies trying to cover their ass…

Let's clarify Twitter request first: Twitter requested permission to reveal exact number of requests. Companies are allowed to reveal gagged legal process in ranges of 1000, starting at 0, for six-month periods. Combined FISC and NSL requests can be revealed in ranges of 250. This just shows that Twitter is fighting all the way, as I mentioned in my other comment.

Jack Dorsey recently said something about launching a decentralized social media system, this is probably the reason.

Unfortunately a site gets really big like twitter you just have to bow to the powers that be, or they'll make life hard for you.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#54

Post by dhimes »

bladegash wrote: post #31
hf8665 wrote: post #11

Does anyone know why judges are so deferential to the US security apparatus? It seems in general like they have a clear bias toward "taking the security system at its word", even when common sense would dictate otherwise in any particular case. It's sincerely puzzling to me why national security entities seem to get treated so differently and I wonder if there's some legal precedent or consideration I'm not aware of.…

No judge wants to be responsible for a future terrorist attack or degrading intelligence capabilities against other foreign adversaries, regardless of whether the threats are real, perceived, and/or imagined. In this case, releasing the numbers might shine light into their capacity for investigations. In other words, sometimes security/capability gains more from perception than reality.

I agree. Kind of like Pascal's Wager[1], but for terrorist attacks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#55

Post by bradleyjg »

Six years for summary judgment?!? Even if Twitter had won, it and the American public still would have lost through this endless delay. Something needs to be done about the glacial pace of federal litigation. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#56

Post by ppod »

sneak wrote: post #38
parsimo2010 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, a terrorist group could use private DMs on Twitter to coordinate an attack. If the US captured a low-level terrorist that didn’t know all the details of a plan but knew that the remaining details had been sent to other Twitter users, it would be a legitimate national security request if the government asked Twitter for copies of a user’s private DMs. The hypothetical situation above would be an invasi…

I cannot envision any terrorist attack that poses an existential threat to the United States. Fighting terrorism is not a national security matter. Even the largest terrorist attack in the history of the world (not counting the atomic bombings of Japan, which were terroristic by definition but generally excluded from that classification as being carried out during a declared war by a with-a-return-address nation) was…

The law doesn't say existential though, it says grave and imminent. I would focus on 'imminent' in this case - the case has been going on for six years.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#57

Post by schrodinger »

op03 wrote: post #44
cryptica wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more disturbing and I simply can't get my head around is that Americans feel that they can trust big corporations more than their own government. I don't trust US corporations at all and I thought that there was some kind of corporate conspiracy to discredit the US government to allow corporations to gain more power... Now I'm thinking that the situation in the US is even worse than that; not only are corporat…

I dont know what kind of Americans you are running into but thats just not true -> https://www.people-press.org/2019/09/19/why-americans-dont-f...

Thanks for sharing, that was a very interesting read!

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#58

Post by notmarkus »

cercatrova wrote: post #25
Mary-Jane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when? Governments have a history of greed, corruption, and trampling on the rights of it's people for it's own gain. Ref: any history book on any country, ever

The problem is all large organizations strive for power. One can be more easily changed than the other, at least in democratic republics. Corporations are more like autocracies, their leadership can't be changed. One can say that corporations derive power from customers, but this is not necessarily so. As they grow larger, they can necessarily control user habits through psychological means. The government can too bu…

What meaningful changes have people affected in democratic republics in the recent past? Companies that don't keep up with customers' desires go out of business all the time.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#59

Post by parsimo2010 »

sneak wrote: post #38
parsimo2010 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, a terrorist group could use private DMs on Twitter to coordinate an attack. If the US captured a low-level terrorist that didn’t know all the details of a plan but knew that the remaining details had been sent to other Twitter users, it would be a legitimate national security request if the government asked Twitter for copies of a user’s private DMs. The hypothetical situation above would be an invasi…

I cannot envision any terrorist attack that poses an existential threat to the United States. Fighting terrorism is not a national security matter. Even the largest terrorist attack in the history of the world (not counting the atomic bombings of Japan, which were terroristic by definition but generally excluded from that classification as being carried out during a declared war by a with-a-return-address nation) was…

National security threats don’t have to be existential to be legitimate threats. Threats to American lives can be national security threats, even if they don’t threaten to kill 300 million people. ISIS could never threaten the existence of the USA, but they have killed several innocent people, and it should be the government’s responsibility to prevent attacks. The government should practice restraint with how they do this, but there are tons of scenarios where the government should take action before something rises to the level of an existential threat.

Someone walking into your home when you aren’t home and stealing your things isn’t an existential threat to you, but I’ll bet you at least lock your doors when you go out. The flu isn’t an existential threat to most people, but many people get a flu shot every year. Just like individuals take reasonable actions to protect themselves from non-existential threats, the US government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from non-existential threats as well.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#60

Post by iKevinShah »

sneak wrote: post #34
cryptica wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more disturbing and I simply can't get my head around is that Americans feel that they can trust big corporations more than their own government. I don't trust US corporations at all and I thought that there was some kind of corporate conspiracy to discredit the US government to allow corporations to gain more power... Now I'm thinking that the situation in the US is even worse than that; not only are corporat…

There aren't many/any instances of single corporations causing >10M deaths, or oppressing millions of people. There are lots of recorded occasions of single governments doing this. Governments are seen as having authorities that corporations do not, and thus are to be viewed much more skeptically as a general policy. Companies can't raid your house with machine guns, or toss you in jail for publishing an integer on y…

> There aren't many/any instances of single corporations causing >10M deaths, or oppressing millions of people.

Sure. But that doesn't mean they dont have a say / influence in it. Take any social network for example, with a small change in their respective feed / discovery algorithm , it could clearly influence it.

> the maximum possible damage by corporate evil is much, much, much, much less than the maximum possible damage by government evil

In my opinion, it definitely is NOT that less. Sure governments can cause wars and all that but the corporations right now have a lot more control over the mind / general public view of things than the government.

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