Surely, this will be addressed in the next installment of the "Twitter Files". /s
I'm neither a lawyer nor an American but AFAIK according to past SCOTUS rulings, it is illegal for the government to "outsource censorship" to private parties in order to silence speech protected by 1A. A relative of DNC's Podesta or an FBI lawyer working for Twitter add to the impression more than the legal argument I guess.
I think from the legal POV, an @ElonJet suspension backstory wouldn't be as interesting as the other installment of "The Twitter Files."
I haven't followed parts 2 & 3 of the Twitter files. But the irony here is that the government officials involved in part 1 were the Trump administration. Biden was not yet elected and should be considered a private citizen.
"The Trump Administration" can be opposed to actual-Trump.
This is the entire story, but lede buried by MuskHate.
Does no one out here realize this is the same hate-everything-acknowledge-nothing behavior regarding Trump?
That you must hate the person and nothing else matters... "always shoot the messenger"... It seems clear as day to me, but I guess I'm the crazy one.
EDIT: It's called cathartic scapegoating. And if you point it out, it must mean you're a Trump loving far-right loonie toon. Look at the extent that people will go to prove they aren't just shooting the messenger right here, it's just evidence it is happening.
To normals, “DNC Podesta FBI” are keywords signifying far-right conspiracy talk.
It’s funny you mention that because a lot of the alt-right’s success the past few years has been fueled by a pure, unadulterated hatred of anything deemed liberal or progressive.
The idea that the fruits of a hack should not be published by media outlets (including Twitter) for at least a cooling off period makes alot of sense. Also for Podesta to be involved in that since the hacking of his emails was one of the main events of the 2016 election cycle and he was keenly aware of the speed at which those hacks can entangle people and have a profound impact on the democratic process. There's no way a responsible company would want that traffic on their site.
Actually I feel very differently about these two things specifically because Snowden didn't just blindly dump everything he could get regardless of the consequences.
Snowden leaked information about NSA surveillance of foreign persons not on US soil - that kind of activity is explicitly within the NSA's core mission and the legal framework around it. I'll leave aside any debate of the domestic programs - he very definitely did expose entirely legal secret activities. That's either careless or malicious.
That would mean he wasn't careful at all, having outsourced the selection of what data to make public to a 3rd party.
> Sometimes things go beyond domestic vs international - because it’s someone else’s domestic surveillance and if that someone is an ally it’s at least a tiny bit problematic and worthy of review.
Everybody does this with everyone, allies and enemies alike, and doing so is a matter of state foreign policy. This type of activity is exactly what the NSA is charted for. We've reviewed this stuff in writing the laws that charter the agency and govern it's activity.
It's either careless or malicious.
Also legal does not mean moral.
Your free to disagree, but my opinion is that Snowden did the American people a public service, and put clear effort into minimizing the damage. It's not some unambiguous knight in shining armor situation, but more of a shades of grey situation where in my opinion the good outweighed the harm.
So he revealed a terrible fact in an irresponsible way, and then sought asylum in a country which shits on human rights left and right. And this isn't whataboutism, it is an expectation for consistency in morals
That was very much not the conventional wisdom at the time. This choice by Wikileaks was hugely controversial and in stark contrast with Snowden’s leaks, which were published by journalists after having been analysed, filtered and redacted. Citing Snowden and Wikileaks as if they operated in the same way is simply wrong.
And yes, just dumping stuff without at least checking them is morally and practically wrong. If only because it makes you very likely to take part voluntarily or not in disinformation campaigns if you’re fed false documents.
No, there really is very little comparison there.
Taibbi mentions two "suppression" interactions:
> Taibbi reported Twitter had "received and honored" deletion requests from both the Biden campaign and the Trump White House; he presented examples of the former but not of the latter.
(per Wiki)
Only one of those groups was actively in government and as expressed both were requests.