Twitter Bars Intelligence Agencies from Using Analytics Service
wsj.com
wsj.com
It feels like a cheap way to generate press portraying Twitter as a staunch defender of liberty. I'm not sold.
If these archival tweets were around for several hundred years, perhaps they might be interesting to historians in the same way ancient Roman graffiti is. But it seems far more likely to me that this project, even if it does get off the ground, would shut down well before that. I'm not sure Politico comments are that far removed from a lot of tweets... and based on the Politico comments, maybe shutting down that project wouldn't be a bad thing.
Plus, being involved with the government usually involves all kinds of regulatory nonsense and (sometimes) having their personnel on premises for whatever reason.
In summary it's probably a cost cutting measure to keep legal and engineering teams from getting preoccupied with government nonsense requests, but hey they can spin it as giving a big middle finger to the government so why not.
Uhm, intelligence agencies are 'not just another client'.
Do any of you have any concept of duty, service, community?
You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?
You do realize that Twitter is a primary propaganda and recruitment tool for some very, very nefarious people?
Of course the debate regarding the level of privacy we ought to have, and what amounts to government overreach must be had, and likely will never cease, but at the same time, this is a serious business. Lives are literally at stake.
"Plus, being involved with the government usually involves all kinds of regulatory nonsense and (sometimes) having their personnel on premises for whatever reason."
God forbid that other people have a responsibilities much greater than themselves, which doesn't involve making money?
I'm not so naive to suggest that government requests may be burdensome, and on occasion due to ill motives, but I suggest that the premise of your statement lacks perspective.
In this particular case, it would seem that the government should at the very least have access to public Tweets, this would be arguably one of the least intrusive measures they could make, after all, a Tweet by you, I, or an ISIS member is definitely 'public domain' in every sense of the term.
I wish there were more details.
I really want to believe that. I think it would be a better world if I could believe that. But we've seen pretty conclusively that the goals of intelligence agencies don't always line up with the best interests of the citizens they purportedly serve.
So there's a line that has to be walked. How can we give them enough power to defend us, but not enough power to hurt us? We can't; we can only make trade-offs and hope they're the right ones.
This would be so much easier if the people tasked to defend us could be trusted. But they've shown, conclusively, that they can't.
They still do. From the article:
"In a statement, Twitter said its “data is largely public and the U.S. government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could.”"
Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives.
As a comparison, the war on drugs (which a Nixon aid recently revealed was intentionally designed to target his adversaries -- progressives and minorities) has been used as a justification for increased government and police power for years. Now the DEA, FBI, and local police are using parallel construction and keeping their search methodologies out of the purview of the courts.
Even if there is some 'greater good' that our government ideally aims for, the reality of its motivations and actual actuals is far different. Thus, we need not enable further surveillance. If the government wants this data, it is already publicly available and they can build that capacity themselves.
That being said, I agree with most people here that this is mostly for show as they will purchase access through some other means.
The grey area between corporation data collection and government surveillance is interesting though. It puts groups like the ACLU in odd positions -- take drone policy for instance. They believe that "a drone should be deployed by law enforcement only with a warrant, in an emergency, or when there are specific and articulable grounds to believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific criminal act."
But they do not want regulations limiting individual/private use of drones.
It does seem strange to allow a private surveillance fleet but be against a government one. Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?
This may be inaccurate, but I remember somebody explained to me that only people have rights, governments only have power that is to be restricted. Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights, rather than strengthening of governments with less restrictions.
I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict, but in reality that isn't easily accomplished with many of the things we classify as rights today.
If an individual has a right to privacy another individual has a right to freely fly his/her drone over people's houses with a camera, those rights could come in conflict. Thus, it isn't so simple as "ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights". We need to answer which rights, and at what possible expense to other rights.
This is reminiscent of the recent religious liberty vs gay rights fight in the US. As with most of the HN community, I am a supporter of gay rights and don't believe firms should be able to discriminate based on sexual preference. Nonetheless, I think George Will makes some interesting points about conflicting rights in this article[1]:
The case is from back in 2012 when a photographer refused to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony. Going beyond the standard argument of freedom of religion vs right to be free from corporate and government discrimination based on sexual preference, he uses a compelled speech argument:
>Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law thinks that Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”: She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, that express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ...https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...
Given the recent Apple v FBI fight and their possible use of a 'compelled speech argument' to prevent their engineers from writing code they disagreed with, many of us agree that an individual should retain their freedom of speech (and right to be free from compelled speech). This puts me personally in a tricky philosophical predicament because I don't believe the government should be able to compel speech when it is code related to privacy but I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.
I reconcile this contradiction by realizing that we have created a complex web of somewhat conflicting rights, and we need to help find the boundaries, based in large part, on what is best for society.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...
I think that would only be possible if the rights were very weak or unnaturally restricted, for example if their validity was restricted to strictly personal region of space. In a free society, people's intents collide and arguments happen.
I don't think your example with drone presents such a collision though, since a person flying a drone does not imply surveillance is happening. Only if the person intentionally uses the drone to violate privacy there is privacy violation.
> I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.
Why should government interfere with people's views on marriage and sexual relations? That is something theocracies do. I think it is basis of free society that anyone is able to express their opinion and act accordingly even if it pisses off somebody else. If the cake maker does not want to do a transaction, the best solution is the homosexual people get the cake elsewhere. I see no reason why government should compel people to do things against their will in this case.
Terrorism is a very, very serious issue that affects a lot of people in the world.
Sadly, it affects mostly Muslims.
Perhaps you missed the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris?
There is a terrible war on right now between various politically aligned entities, one of them being ISIS which is actively trying to attack Western civilians, with more notable success in Europe.
This is very, very real.
Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.
Nonetheless, what I said was "Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans". My point was in the context of the tradeoffs we make in our society given the risks.
For example, our TSA security measures have actually increased deaths in America BC people have substituted to driving when when it would have been a short flight due to the inconvenience of airport security [1].
Since driving is much riskier Han flying, deaths have increased such that more people have died from this effect than from all terrorism in the US since (and including 9/11).
Because the threat of terrorism is extremely small WITHIN the US, our response has been entirely overblown.
A similar example is the surge in gun purchases after the San Bernardino shooting. Gun related accidents from these purchases will undoubtedly cause more deaths than terrorism.
Thus, when making policy (and personal) decisions, we need to do an objective cost/benefit analysis.
The result: it absolutely makes sense to own a gun, have limited freedom of movement, or government surveillance if you live in Afghanistan. In the US, not so much.
>Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.
I'm extremely well read in international policy research. Many of my friends are researchers at RAND corporation, and they focus on international terrorism.
My response to your statement would be that you can't create a generalized policy solution for the whole world. It needs to be contextualized by the situation on the ground.
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...
I simply don't believe the values that you bring up exist in Government anymore. We, the American people, have voted for our favorite party affiliation for so long now that the politicians have turned it into sport. It's not about getting people into office that are going to actually do anything (single digit congressional approval anyone?). It is a popularity contest. So, you get the least effective people in the most powerful positions and soon they will have to start cheating to do their job. Trampling on our Bill of Rights is them cheating.
Yes. Duty is important.
> You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I
That's the problem. A lot of people in the intelligence community are serving a cause, but it's not the cause they promised to defend when they swore an oath of office.
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;
and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on
which I am about to enter.
Snowden is one of the few that fulfilled his duty to the Constitution. Everyone else in the intelligence community that stayed silent instead of reporting rights violations and other crimes is a collaborator that placed personal interest above their duty.
Wow, I didn't know that. Well it figures - when oaths or promises like this are demanded by an institution (university, army, government) for the advancement of career, it isn't hard to guess that most people will comply, despite their actual feelings and goals. The whole concept of public oath seems to be in place mainly to maintain the public belief in the institution, rather than actual procurement of allegiance.
One thing I'd guess too is that the NSA must have the mother of all password databases. Given all the login forms that went through unencrypted and still do. If I was the NSA that's the first thing I would have captured.
https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/buildi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...
FWIW - That's a parody site. However, that's not to disclaim that the Utah data center isn't being built.
Although really the other 2% wouldn't be hard to get considering the power they have.
Also of note is the "Future Enlargement" section of that article, where it expands on other partnerships: "Six Eyes", "Nine Eyes", "Fourteen Eyes".
What's anti-liberty about collecting information that people voluntarily show the world? I actually disagree with this decision on the basis that it just eliminates potential business opportunities for Twitter corp.
I mean, if I tweet something, I can't then turn around and get angry at someone who approaches me and says, "Hey, you ran at central park yesterday, I saw it on your twitter." or whatever, because I voluntarily chose to tweet it.
The same goes for anybody else, including intelligence agencies. I can't read past the paywall but I googled around and to my understanding, it's not even the intelligence agencies that are doing it to begin with. These other companies correlate all the data, structure it with an API they provide to the intelligence agencies. So at this point, there's two different types of businesses now suffering from this decision.
I don't even understand why I like twitter so much, they keep doing these stupid, stupid things!
But fundamentally, as long as Dataminr (as by extension, the Intelligence Community) is only accessing publicly available information purposely broadcast by users, this is pretty innocuous.
If Dataminr/IC was pushing for data from protected accounts, DMs, or other non-public info, then it's a different game.
Especially given Twitter's more censorious habits regarding hashtags..
Anyways, I think there is some small amount of value here. Making it a ToS violation for certain groups to access your service makes it a bit more difficult for such programs to officially continue.
The subheadline here is actually: "Social media firm cuts access to Dataminr, a service used to identify unfolding terror attacks, political unrest"
So, Dataminr is a startup that had the firehose to do that kind of analysis.
All this could be is them putting a company that is built on top of Twitter out of business. They have done this plenty of times. Seems pretty heavily spun to make it sound like they are taking some sort of moral high ground.
Dataminr didn't provide access to the firehose, iirc, but had a really good event detection product. I had actually heard of them because I heard CNN was a very happy user of the product.
EDIT: >The move doesn’t affect Dataminr’s service to financial industry, news media or other clients outside the intelligence community. The Wall Street Journal is involved in a trial of Dataminr’s news product.
Read the article, and it seems media companies still have access. I guess Twitter is telling another company who their customers can and can't be.
So why was the exception made to this policy?
> In-Q-Tel, a venture-capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community, has been investing in data-mining companies to beef up the government’s ability to sort through massive amounts of information. In-Q-Tel, for example, has invested in data-mining firms Palantir Technologies Inc. and Recorded Future Inc.
> U.S. intelligence agencies gained access to Dataminr’s service after an In-Q-Tel investment in the firm, according to a person familiar with the matter.
> When a pilot program arranged by In-Q-Tel ended recently, Twitter told Dataminr it didn’t want to continue the relationship with intelligence agencies, this person said.
VC funds led by US agencies that operate on a quasi-legal and opaque basis is the worst form of crony capitalism
Open version of the article http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-intelligence-a...
That right there. That's the scary part.
They don't operate on a financial motivation. They have literally no requirement to do so. What they do is identify commercial products that any/all of the federal government may be interested in using and fund it if possible, or at least try to fund partial features.
For example, Google Earth was funded by In-Q-Tel long before Google bought the product. In fact, many startups use In-Q-Tel funding as a badge of honor when pitching to VCs later on, as it shows a potential revenue source given the existing financial commitment.
The only thing your reply right there proved is that you don't know me at all.
I'm also aware of the government/defence dept. backing of the foundations of the internet itself. Thanks.
At the very least they'll use a company like Palantir. Is a third party's use similarly regulated, so that Palantir couldn't simply relay that data themselves?
If not, then this was clearly not thought out (unlikely) or it's been thought out but a choice was made to still allow for that use case (more likely).
I suggest were you to have the opportunity to sit in on Mr. Obama's daily security briefings, you might have your eyes widened as to the scope of the violence that threatens us.
In Canada, where I live, our young Prime Minister had a rather negative tone about such things during the election, but the moment he was elected, and had visibility into the actual goings on, he changed his tune pretty quickly and the bills he was supposed to quash will remain intact.
Of course, lazy policemen wanting Twitter to do their work for them notwithstanding.
Yes, third part use is regulated by Twitter too.
I realize Palantir has demoed similar functionality, but they require you to source your own data subscription.
Facebook on the other hand built a Washington DC office and hires ex-secret service people as a matter of course.
This should be the number one reason people should drop using FB.... But everyone is already fucked. You have no privacy, again, ever.
Also, the Secret Service employs some of the smartest and most capable people in the federal government. Any company is lucky to hire ex-USSS agents.
Using these two points as evidence that humanity collectively has "no privacy" is not only false on the surface but dishonest when closely examined. There are valid critiques of both the US Government's use of the Internet and, separately, Facebook, but these two are not intellectually honest.
What a ridiculous statement. I wish I had enough karma to downvote you.
What about any of a thousand front companies these Intelligence Agencies run for plausible deniability purposes?
This move does pretty much nothing.
"Look, that's like the fifteenth request for the 'Whole Banana' this week. We're gonna have to --"
(telephone murmurs)
"Fine, so you have a nosebleed level pay grade. Sir. But there's more Twitter bandwidth going to you folks in DC than there is to all of the /real/ users of Twitter. It's embarrassing. Why can't you just go down the street and ask the CIA?"
(angry murmurs)
"Or the FBI. I hear they have a special on faking evidence with parallel reconstruction this week. Want the promo code?"
Twitter is a truly two-faced Orwellian enterprise that is completely in the back pocket of Big Brother.
[1] https://www.change.org/p/petition-request-twitter-not-to-sup...
[2] http://www.vocativ.com/290811/twitter-accused-of-censoring-a...
> Are paywalls ok?
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.