U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by DeathArrow » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

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…

>They've conveniently mixed it in with "but terrorism!"

Alternatively they justify some actions with the war on drugs or fighting against pedophiles with: "think of the children".

If you promote strong encryption you might help drug dealers, pedophiles and terrorists.

There's also the preaching: "you shouldn't be worried of us spying if you have nothing to hide".

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

#102

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #66

sneak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Corporations are also fairly rational beasts when it comes to incentives - they want to capture wealth, or failing that they create more wealth then capture some of the it. They are a known quantity. It is somewhat possible to anticipate what they will do. They tend towards not discriminating irrationally. Governments are comparatively hard to read. They are by and large not motivated by anything specific and are oft…

> Governments are comparatively hard to read.

Maybe in the moment, because the constraints they're fighting against are large and not easily understood except through hindsight, but history shows that adversarial governments are pretty rational as well. They seek to increase their dominance, natural resources, and manufacturing capability, amongst their peers, and over ever-larger numbers of people. Just like corporations, it's all self-serving turtles, all the way down.

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

#103

Post by backtoyoujim » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

Twitter requires phone numbers.

I wonder if the millions of US Americans whose stimulus checks got "lost" are somehow correlated to people that have criticized Trump on twitter.

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

#104

Post by DeathArrow » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

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…

>I cannot envision any terrorist attack that poses an existential threat to the United States.

SARS-CoV-2 killed more US citizens than the most severe terrorist attack in US history.

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

#105

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #93

_gccu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, not anymore. 9/11 was a self-correcting bug, it became completely irrelevant to security starting on 9/12

Literally before the day was over, it was no longer possible to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. The brave people on United Airlines Flight 93 likely prevented a much worse tragedy, simply because they were aware of what could happen.

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

#106

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #42

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.…

Okay, you rule against the CIA and try sleeping well at night. Also, the judges that get these cases were undoubtedly picked (at some point of elevation in their career) for how "reasonable" they would be on these issues. You gotta remember that "national security" became a thing decades ago (Truman? Eisenhower?), so the system has gone through many several generations of selection pressure.

I guess you can level the blame at Truman. Eisenhower himself tried to warn us against going down this road, but the game had already been rigged against us.

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

#107

Post by WillPostForFood » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #98

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…

> If the US government made one request to stop a terrorist plot that they had some specific knowledge of, that would be okay in my eyes. How can we tell that they just didn't straight up lie about whether the one request was to stop a terrorist plot, and not to gather intel on political foes or ex girlfriends? With no oversight and no one allowed to advocate for the rights of the individuals under surveillance, I am…

A NSL doesn’t allow the government to ask for the contents of a DM. They would need a warrant for that, providing some checks and balances.

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

#108

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #62

notmarkus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every aspect of the social safety net in the developed world? Political power shifts happen all the time in democratic republics as the populace gets fed up with the party/parties in power.

What social safety net? You mean like universal healthcare? Paid parental leave? Decent unemployment benefits?

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

#109

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #84

Mary-Jane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! The biggest difference is that your interaction with any given businesses is not compulsory.

That’s now how monopolies work. Standard Oil and US Steel weren’t easy to opt out of.

Which tech company are we obligated to use?

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

#110

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

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…

Well, because the design of the US federal government with both the electoral college and two senators per state without taking the population into account. If you live in a more populous state, you have much less voting power than “Middle America”.

Not to mention gerrymandering and widespread voter suppression.