Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
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Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#2The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch.
For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening.
When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it just a fact about the ecosystem?
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#3The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
My thoughts exactly. Sometimes you will lose the cat and mouse game and often the spies just have a huge upper hand on you.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#4The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
I get what you’re saying, but one way or another personal data twitter was entrusted with was leaked and people were murdered as a result. I don’t know if twitter was actually negligent here, but it seems worthwhile to find out through this law suit.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#5The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
I have only read the article and not the text of the legal complaint, but according to the article, he is specifically not basing his complaint on them being a victim of espionage and is making more specific allegations:
> "While Twitter may wish to play the victim of state-sponsored espionage, Twitter's conduct in punishing the victims of this intrigue, including Mr. Al-Ahmed, tells a far different story: one of ratification, complicity, and/or adoption tailored to appease a neigh beneficial owner and preserve access to a key market, the KSA," Randy Kleinman, the attorney for Al-Ahmed, wrote in the complaint.
I have no idea if their allegations are correct, but the argument you're dismissing is explicitly not what they're saying.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#6The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
I get what you’re saying, but one way or another personal data twitter was entrusted with was leaked and people were murdered as a result. I don’t know if twitter was actually negligent here, but it seems worthwhile to find out through this law suit.
> but it seems worthwhile to find out through this law suit.
If Twitter could assess a huge penalty on the plaintiff for filing a frivolous lawsuit, maybe.
Otherwise, no. We already know that Twitter specifically tried to deal with one of these spies when he came to their attention, shortly before he escaped. There is no reason to believe that Twitter did anything wrong, and excellent reason to believe they didn't.
Lawsuits aren't cost-free; the off-chance that, against all expectations, you might find something that almost definitely isn't there is not a good reason to entertain one.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#7The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
Yes, the argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes negligence is a stretch. However, that’s not what Mr. Al-Ahmed’s suit alleges - it alleges they were victims of espionage because of their negligence.
I have a suggestion. In the future, keep the analogies to yourself and talk about facts.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#8The argument that being a victim of espionage constitutes per se negligence seems like a stretch. For spies to exist at all, they need to fool whatever supervision is in place. For missing them to be negligence, it would have to be easy to prevent spying from happening. When a warbler feeds a cuckoo chick and lets his own chicks starve, is that because he's a bad parent who could be fixed with a lawsuit, or is it jus…
I have only read the article and not the text of the legal complaint, but according to the article, he is specifically not basing his complaint on them being a victim of espionage and is making more specific allegations: > "While Twitter may wish to play the victim of state-sponsored espionage, Twitter's conduct in punishing the victims of this intrigue, including Mr. Al-Ahmed, tells a far different story: one of rat…
The allegation you quote is not an espionage allegation. It's saying that because this activist's Twitter account received unfavorable treatment from Twitter, we should assume that the unfavorable treatment of his account is evidence that Twitter is an arm of the Saudi government, and therefore the separate incident involving espionage must have happened with Twitter's cooperation or at least without Twitter's objection.
Note that the quoted allegation does not even allege any misconduct on Twitter's part! The only purpose is to ask you to draw an adverse inference about what Twitter was thinking when they became the victim of espionage.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#9Whether twitter was negligent or not the bigger lesson here is that you should assume every big tech company is compromised by every state that cares to do so. Don’t trust any company with compromising information. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that they employ a spy for your adversary.
Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get what you’re saying, but one way or another personal data twitter was entrusted with was leaked and people were murdered as a result. I don’t know if twitter was actually negligent here, but it seems worthwhile to find out through this law suit.
> but it seems worthwhile to find out through this law suit. If Twitter could assess a huge penalty on the plaintiff for filing a frivolous lawsuit, maybe. Otherwise, no. We already know that Twitter specifically tried to deal with one of these spies when he came to their attention, shortly before he escaped. There is no reason to believe that Twitter did anything wrong, and excellent reason to believe they didn't. L…
If Twitter could assess penalties this wouldn’t be a legal system. Courts and judges assess penalties. Companies can sue for damages but they don’t assess penalties.
With all due respect, this is the second ignorant thing you’ve said on this article. You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Please stop…