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The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

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Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#291

Post by beej71 »

pannSun wrote: post #189
beej71 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to understand what punishment needs to be handed out, here. The government asked Twitter to keep some of their fake propaganda accounts online and Twitter did. What laws have been violated?

We are discussing whether the event is notable, not if it is legal. And as someone not from the US, I care more about making people aware that Twitter collaborates with the US to help spread their govt. propaganda (in the same way I would want them to know if the doctor they're discussing smoking with is employed by the tobacco industry), than whether Twitter complies with laws written by that same government. I.e. c…

People should definitely know. For any government and public-facing system, that government will use that public-facing system to achieve its ends.

Sometimes this is asking that system to print a PSA. Sometimes this is asking that system to maintain propaganda accounts.

This definitely exists, and I'm not sure why people think it wouldn't.

We can complain, but the real remedy is to put laws in place if this is something we really care about.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#292

Post by mypastself »

stefan_ wrote: post #5

Can't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-breaking) tweets. Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his handlers demand he ignore that, of course.

Why would petty personal vendettas be placed in the same category as specific requests made by a nation-state’s intelligence agencies?

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#293

Post by chaosbolt »

barnabee wrote: post #118
quacked wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A well-armed and informed populace governing itself" is a pipe dream by indigenous uncontacted people and certain very intelligent dissenters. The majority of "civilized" people in the world are very happy to live in an authoritarian information-sanitized nation so long as the people in power cater to their own in-group.

I’d like to think this site of all places might be populated with very intermittent dissenters willing to be or at least support activists trying to change that, with the internet and technology as their tool. It’s always jarring to discover the extent to which it’s not.

The age of cypherpunks is dead, we live in the age of the "programmer who blindly believes the same thing everyone at his company believes and thinks he's right because he's intelligent because he's a programmer".

And the scary thing is, this came out of nowhere, one day everyone online is for freedom and freespeech, the next day everyone became against it, it's the same thing for Elon Musk, it's crazy how popular he was online and how everyone loved him, he didn't do anything bad between then and now (except insult a couple people here and there and other asshole things we have all done in the past) but went from "invented X" to "merely invested in X", and from "genius" to "idiot", etc.

The people who said they couldn't tame the internet were as wrong as those who said the same thing about crypto.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#294

Post by beej71 »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #205
beej71 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to understand what punishment needs to be handed out, here. The government asked Twitter to keep some of their fake propaganda accounts online and Twitter did. What laws have been violated?

The First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It's since been expanded through court cases to extend from congress to every government entity including local ones. The go…

This doesn't mean the government can't make requests to private companies, including the press.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#295

Post by lawn »

epivosism wrote: post #74
lawn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe instead of just repeating that we should re-read them, you should point out exactly what is so aggrevating, and where in the files you're referring to? Simply repeating things is a propaganda and brainwashing technique.

jumping in here, but what makes me worried is a strong power being used without proper controls, auditing, and system design. From a system perspective it looks like the US Gov had elevated access to ban people, and had opportunity and reason to misuse it. The initial rationale for the US Gov already admits this as a legit reason to ban foreign agents - "undue power/misleading influence". I hold that same view, but a…

If you read the files, it does not say that the US Gov can just ban people. What they did is flag people, and then Twitter reviews the requests.

I'm much more worried about the current state of affairs where a single deranged person (Elon) can arbitrarily issue bans on a whim.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#297

Post by philippejara »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #264
philippejara wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to claim to be an american law expert, but when the agencies can just say "nope" to evidence against them in said court of law, it becomes hard to claim strong legal protections. I may be wrong and misunderstanding the law, but it does seem like that. And as a shot in the dark here I doubt it got any better after the patriot act. "Joseph P. Nacchio (born June 22, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York) is an Americ…

The government proved insider trading. >I'm not going to claim to be an american law expert, but when the agencies can just say "nope" to evidence against them in said court of law, it becomes hard to claim strong legal protections. I may be wrong and misunderstanding the law, but it does seem like that. And as a shot in the dark here I doubt it got any better after the patriot act. This is nonsense. In your example…

is it a conspiracy theory because they said it was? you don't know and neither do I, it does sound like he thought that asking the NSA for what he has a right to ask for, a warrant to give up data, wouldn't impact his chances of renewing government contracts, but it seems it did and they were dropped and the stock plummeted. Could be the other way around and he expected it and did commit fraud, I don't know and won't pretend to not be biased against the NSA, but the retaliation from them is pretty convenient in either case. The concept of being able to exclude evidence just because "natsec might be at risk" is also absurd to me, instead of taking the trial to a judge with clearance or something.

The uncertainty of the sentence aside we can zoom out and see that asking to follow legal processes that every single one of those companies should be following in the first place can very well cause retaliation from the NSA, so all else aside invoking legal protections sure does seem to be bad for companies.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#298

Post by wallfacer120 »

froggertoaster wrote: post #29

You can downplay this all you want - but remember: stuff like this is a microcosm of a larger issue. Sections of your government worked directly with Twitter to control what information you saw. Much bigger organizations - Facebook comes to mind - must be doing the same thing every.single.day. And no one finds this even a little bit alarming?

[dead]

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#299

Post by colpabar »

fallingknife wrote: post #275
colpabar wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think dang kinda just looks the other way because he knows people want to talk politics, but it's literally the first thing in the "off topic" section of the guidelines. > What to Submit > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-To…

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting I would say that government agencies trying to stop me from seeing information that it doesn't like is something most good hackers would find interesting.

I did too! But like I said, the majority of HN does not. We love our LEOs here.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#300

Post by OrvalWintermute »

beej71 wrote: post #172
pannSun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt. psyops/undisclosed propaganda. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

I'm struggling to understand what punishment needs to be handed out, here. The government asked Twitter to keep some of their fake propaganda accounts online and Twitter did. What laws have been violated?

I am a strong supporter of the intelligence community when it is focused on its correct mission of nation-state hostiles, real terrorists like Bin Ladin & international/federal criminals, but I think the government overstepped the line in multiple ways that favored partisan political campaigns and certain parties. Though I believe firmly that these institutions are vital to our success as a nation, I also think they can be internally weaponized against specific groups, and that is going on currently.

It is pretty clear that these are Hatch Act violations which is about preventing your tax dollars being put to use as a part of partisan political campaigns, which is what happened.

Civilian "unempowered" agencies fall under the Less Restricted Hatch Act category, and certain Agencies like the IC, fall under a more stringent part of this, the Further Restricted category, see [1]

Some of these IC members in the Further Restricted Category were prompting BigTech censorship, or, running defense for the "Laptop from Hell" story, similar to some of the things they did back in the 60s when they were involved with unlawful activities regarding Civil Rights and Civil Liberties campaigns.

I'd argue in favor of:

(1) Strengthening the Hatch Act

(2) Handling Constitutional violations by the IC under the Hatch Act

(3) Prosecutions of the Hatch Act under existing Law

(4) Clearance revocations

(5) Removal of Section 230 protections for BigTech when acting as an agent of govt censorship

(6) Budget cuts / Budget reformations for some select Federal Agencies, FBI being foremost

(7) Forced retirement / exit from federal service of those involved in these behaviors.

(8) Debarring of contractors involved in some of these heinious activities

(9) Strengthening Federal Acquisition Regulation

(10) Diffusion of Federal Agencies HQs throughout the United States to prevent centralization in overly partisan areas

(11) Applying Diversity & Inclusion to political parties and other important characteristics of job seekers

(12) Adding restrictions or longer "Cooling Off Periods" for the revolving doors between IC, Congress, BigTech, Lobbyists, and the Consultant Class.

[1] https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct-Federal.aspx

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