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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

#161

Post by riffic »

u801e wrote: post #151
SidenKniffsBids wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter has no interest in doing that. I would recommend people start asking their lawmakers for better rules around putting government messaging on public infrastructure rather than use of accounts on third-party commercial services.

We live in an age where open web standards can create software that looks and feels a lot like the existing closed/commercial platforms (ActivityPub/Mastodon et cetera).

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

#162

Post by Der_Einzige »

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…

Have you seen what Firestone has done to Liberia? Dude come on. The banana wars? Talk about not being charitable to history

They're responsible at least for the oppression of millions of people. 10 million deaths can't be directly attributed to them but they can be attributed maybe 1/10th of that. The issue is that there are a lot of corporations for which the case is pretty good that theyve left a lot of people to die and far more oppressed.

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

#163

Post by analbumcover »

adjkant wrote: post #121
m_a_g wrote: post #13

I wish there is a Twitter employee like Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning to leak those surveillance requests. Leaking documents seems to be the only way forward in the U.S.

Chelsea Manning, not Bradley

Wasn't it Bradley at the time of the leaks?

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

#164

Post by dodobirdlord »

pinkfoot wrote: post #43
1f60c wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But couldn't they force Twitter to keep updating the canary as part of the gag order?

Yes, you are not allowed to take any action to circumvent the gag order. Changing the status of the canary included. [From memory from some ancient HN thread]

The workaround is to make the canary automatically lapse frequently unless renewed. Precedent in the past regarding library books provides that you can't be compelled to do something by a gag order that qualifies as speech, and updating a canary daily with a statement like "As of {current_date} we know of no warrants that have been issued for {private_content}" probably qualifies. Have a static page, update the date value daily so long as it's true, stop updating it when it becomes false. Based on the library book precedent I think this would hold up.

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

#165

Post by TheNorthman »

analbumcover wrote: post #163
adjkant wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chelsea Manning, not Bradley

Wasn't it Bradley at the time of the leaks?

How is that relevant? Don't dead name people and in general don't be a dick.

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

#166

Post by T-hawk »

DeathArrow wrote: post #101
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".

We need a name for this fallacy:

"We are empowered to stop terrorism." (or drugs, CP, etc)

"X can be used for terrorism."

"Therefore we are empowered to stop X."

Thus that agency gains power over all possible X. Like cash, any monetary transaction, photography, encryption, any messaging system whatsoever, or any number of other things that should make up the bedrock of a free society.

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

#167

Post by scarface74 »

aspenmayer wrote: post #152
scarface74 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are severe negative externalities to my life when corporations are allowed to pollute. HN posters usually want the government to regulate technology. What major negative externalities that affect my health in an unavoidable way does the tech industry impose?

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

#168

Post by riffic »

kerkeslager wrote: post #105
tehwebguy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> before the day was over, it was no longer possible to hijack a plane and fly it into a building

These aren't hijackings but your statement is factually dubious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Pirelli_Tower_airplane_cr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Tampa_Cessna_172_crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Wichita_King_Air_crash

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

#169

Post by scarface74 »

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.

the government trying to please the majority is fine if you’re not a religious or racial minority and if you are straight. The US was trying to “please” religious conservatives when they passed laws against miscegenation just like the French were when they tried to pass laws against the burkini.

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

#170

Post by cercatrova »

notmarkus wrote: post #157
cercatrova wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but the problem is not when the corporation is small, but when it is large. With increased power, it can reach the levels of a nation-state in affecting people, and it is unchangeable as there is no mechanism, unlike voting, to change its behavior. You may say that the customer is always right and so will choose a different product, but this can only be done with a free market, which does not exist currently, and can only exist with strong governments free of monetary influence, as I said before. Sure, pockets of free market, competitive behavior exist, but for large corporations, they are near oligopolies, and people can't switch to another provider. See healthcare, colleges, ISPs, and so on.

Either way, one should be wary of large organizations, regardless of their type such as governmental or corporate.

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