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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

#151

Post by u801e »

SidenKniffsBids wrote: post #53
nabla9 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder, if at this point, Twitter should consider updating their policy to state that government officials are no longer allowed to use their platform and close their accounts.

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

#152

Post by aspenmayer »

scarface74 wrote: post #117
robin_reala wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Smoking was the second leading risk factor for early death and disability worldwide in 2015. It has claimed more than 5 million lives every year since 1990.” [1] “6 Mega Corporations Control Almost the Entire Global Cigarette Industry” [2] 25 years × 5M people / 6 corporations = 20.83M deaths per corporation (leaving out pre-1990 / post-2015 deaths). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5439023/ [2] http…

No corporation has the force of law to make me smoke. The government however does have the ability to invade my privacy and take away my liberty via the “War on Drugs”.

Does it count when EPA allows itself to be co-opted by corporations to repeal environmental regulations and air quality standards that were already in place? That seems like all parties are actually doing less than nothing.

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

#153

Post by aspenmayer »

scarface74 wrote: post #118
notmarkus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate power comes, largely, through government power. Corporations coopt the government and use its power to protect or enrich themselves. Why would corporations want to weaken that?

I am much less worried about corporations corrupting government than the “moral majority.” Corporations have never lobbied to pass laws against interracial marriage - which was illegal in some states until the 60s. Nor did they try to make it felony for adults of the same sex to be in relationships. There were laws against “sodomy” in some states until the 80a.

I’m worried about both. The moral majority was invented from whole cloth by wealthy individuals usually affiliated with large companies. It’s a farce that benefits corporations and their owners and lends them political support for their economic actions that does not logically follow.

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015)

http://kevinmkruse.com/book/one-nation-under-god/

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-am...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_M._Kruse

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

#154

Post by Craighead »

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…

Your take of the Japan bombings as terrorism reveals you lack nuance necessary for this conversation.

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

#155

Post by ceejayoz »

scarface74 wrote: post #150
ceejayoz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-read the thread you’re commenting on.

Seeing that I started the “thread I am commenting on” and specifically asked is this the same government that should be regulating tech....

The whole thread, not just the first comment.

> "all large organizations", "democratic republics", "the developed world"

Someone else also pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22909123) that even the US has plenty of "safety net" policies, despite some glaring holes in it.

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

#156

Post by notmarkus »

scarface74 wrote: post #118
notmarkus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate power comes, largely, through government power. Corporations coopt the government and use its power to protect or enrich themselves. Why would corporations want to weaken that?

I am much less worried about corporations corrupting government than the “moral majority.” Corporations have never lobbied to pass laws against interracial marriage - which was illegal in some states until the 60s. Nor did they try to make it felony for adults of the same sex to be in relationships. There were laws against “sodomy” in some states until the 80a.

No, they just push for infinitely increasing military spending, which leads to needless wars resulting in millions of deaths.

Both are horrible, let's be real.

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

#157

Post by notmarkus »

cercatrova wrote: post #146
scarface74 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments are far from optimized for the well being of all it’s citizens. It’s optimized for the majority. Just like the “War on Drugs” turned into “treating it like a disease” when drugs started hitting “rural” America. France passed a law to make the Burkini illegal - targeting Muslims. This isn’t just the US.

Of course, you can't please everyone. The distinction is, at least governments try to. Corporations do not, by design, as they are only incentivized to collect money and funnel it to the top X% of the company, not even the company as a whole which includes workers.

Corporations work by providing a product or service that customers believe to be worth more than the dollars and cents they're paying for it. It's inherently consensual. The only way a corporation begins to generate revenue is literally by attempting to please as many customers as possible.

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

#158

Post by riffic »

senderista wrote: post #67
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…

The fact that Twitter refuses to enforce its TOS when the POTUS issues a call to armed insurrection against state governors is an existential threat to the United Ststes.

call your congress critters and tell them that they need to legislate the executive branch spinning up their own activitypub-compliant social implementations on government-funded infrastructure rather than continuing to relay messages through third-party commercial services.

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

#159

Post by Der_Einzige »

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…

Yo dude al-queda has certainly tried to get their hands on precursors for making a Nuke. You can thank Obama for making nuclear prolif hard but a single shipping container nuke in the wrong place going off will make 9/11 and coronavirus look like a walk in the park compared to the existential shitstorm of a Nuke on a populated city.

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

#160

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #100

A few thoughts: 1) There is no such thing as privacy anymore, at least with respect to anything electronic. I know this because I wanted to be the head of a large online community (I worked on a program which I hoped would become the next Facebook), and I studied everything I could about security/privacy that I could for many years. 2) It would be better, far better, if, when users signed up on Twitter (or any other…

> There is no such thing as privacy anymore, at least with respect to anything electronic.

There never was! I was there for Scott McNealy telling us, "You HAVE no privacy. Get over it." As the CEO of Sun, he knew exactly what the federal government was doing with all those computers they were buying: running Larry's database, and archiving absolutely any-and-everything they could. All Snowden did is show us how well the tools running on top of that infrastructure work, 25 years on.

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