Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 131 posts

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#61

Post by enraged_camel »

rrggrr wrote: post #60

Twitter is a medium at the forefront of democracy movements worldwide. If there were any site worth standing down surveillance in pursuit of a larger foreign policy goal then I would have thought Twitter would be that site. Instead, I'm now imagining young staffers at various US agencies squirming with dumb chills as senior policy makers articulate Twitter's threat to US national security or law enforcement objective…

The way I like to think about it is that every stupid decision by a senior policy maker increases the chances of another Edward Snowden emerging.

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#62

Post by jarradhope »

rrggrr wrote: post #60

Twitter is a medium at the forefront of democracy movements worldwide. If there were any site worth standing down surveillance in pursuit of a larger foreign policy goal then I would have thought Twitter would be that site. Instead, I'm now imagining young staffers at various US agencies squirming with dumb chills as senior policy makers articulate Twitter's threat to US national security or law enforcement objective…

Well the problem is that policy making is completely institutionalized and only serves the 1%, which is why software like Ethereum is going to be so important in the future. It will democratize policy making and put it in the hands of everyone. As well as means to articulate any other form of meetings of the minds.

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#63

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jarradhope wrote: post #62
rrggrr wrote: post #60

Twitter is a medium at the forefront of democracy movements worldwide. If there were any site worth standing down surveillance in pursuit of a larger foreign policy goal then I would have thought Twitter would be that site. Instead, I'm now imagining young staffers at various US agencies squirming with dumb chills as senior policy makers articulate Twitter's threat to US national security or law enforcement objective…

Well the problem is that policy making is completely institutionalized and only serves the 1%, which is why software like Ethereum is going to be so important in the future. It will democratize policy making and put it in the hands of everyone. As well as means to articulate any other form of meetings of the minds.

Democratizing policy making is not a guaranteed panacea. Things like the civil rights movement don't happen as a result of democratic policy; they happen when the majority are forced to live a better way.

The founders recognized pure democracy was not an ideal government, regardless of technological issues with regard to implementing it. A republic allows decisions to be made that the majority will never agree to.

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#64

Post by SoftwareMaven »

joeblau wrote: post #24

While this is a valiant cause, I don't know what this buys Twitter in the long run. If they have the ability to disclose exact numbers, the only number that would really have any impact is 0. It would be interesting to know what, if any, this number would have on their business.

Twitter has said they don't get many of these requests compared to e.g. Google (not surprising, since most Twitter content is public). The difference between "0" and "0-999" in a six month period is significant. Even "2" or "3" seems very low compared to what the mind assumes "0-999" means (at least 500 and perhaps closer to 1000).

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#65

Post by Zigurd »

happyscrappy wrote: post #44
xnull wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voters will only demand it if they are informed. Voters will only be informed if both social and traditional media are able to provide actionable, verifiable and non-biased reports. Media will only be able to provide quality information when political, intelligence and profit interests have less leverage than an educated purchasing public majority. Political/intelligence interests will only have have less leverage if…

>Voters will only demand it if they are informed. By and large the public know about the Patriot act and support it, you may disagree but don't pretend they don't know about it. >Voters will only be informed if both social and traditional media are able to provide actionable, verifiable and non-biased reports. The reports are there yet the public has yet to be swayed. >Media will only be able to provide quality infor…

It's been shown that democracy only works for trivial matters.

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#68

Post by chimeracoder »

2xlbuds wrote: post #67

I'm curious as to what would actually happen if Twitter just decided to release the exact numbers. Would they be slapped with a fine? What if they didn't pay the fine? Would they be forced to be shut down? People would not tolerate that one bit.

Almost certainly criminal charges, and possibly (probably?) ones that "pierce the veil" (ie, go after the executives/employees personally, not [just] the corporation).

Not exactly something anybody would really want to risk.

(I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice).

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#69

Post by eli »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #9
suprgeek wrote: post #3

This eminently reasonable - Basically all Twitter wants to say is we have received X requests of Y type. Right now they are restricted to broad categories 0-999, between 6 & 8 thousand etc. I thought they were going farther - that they wanted a per account notification ability; not the case.

Can they get around this by citing 2 partially overlapping ranges in separate reports? E.g. report 1: "We received 0-500 NSLs" report 2: "We received 450-950 NSLs"

No. The ranges were apparently the result of tense negotiations with DoJ and are strictly defined.

It's especially frustrating that the lowest range includes zero, so it's impossible to say for sure that a certain company has never received a request.

Re: Twitter sues U.S. government over ability to disclose surveillance orders

#70

Post by eli »

Kalium wrote: post #23
uptown wrote: post #15

I've never really understood why companies aren't able to disclose these numbers. It tells the public nothing about specific investigations. To me - it seems like the government has chosen to draw the line in the sand so far beyond where it should be, to avoid having the actual debate over corporate disclosure of more-specific information.

Think of it in crypto terms. If you can know when an investigation is ongoing, you can learn something useful as an adversary.

True, though I don't think Twitter is asking to be able to reveal information in real time.
Post reply on HN