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National security concerns just won out over Twitter's attempt to be transparent about surveillance:
Six years ago, Twitter sued the US government in an attempt to detail surveillance requests the company had received, but a federal judge on Friday ruled in favor of the government's case that detailing the requests would jeopardize the country's safety.
If Twitter revealed the number of surveillance requests it received each calendar quarter, it "would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security," US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded after reviewing classified information from the government. See below for the full ruling.
"While we are disappointed with the court's decision, we will continue to fight for transparency," Twitter said in a statement Saturday.
(Score: 0, Troll) by fustakrakich on Monday April 20 2020, @03:27PM (4 children)
All we ever get from the "whistleblowers" is Hurricane Anna Nicole [deccanherald.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 20 2020, @04:26PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @05:02PM (2 children)
Heh, they nailed the DNC pretty good back in '16, didn't they?
It's weird that more people don't regard them as heroes for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @09:35PM (1 child)
James Comey was Trump's MVP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @10:03PM
James Comey is a punk.
He didn't look into the DNC emails
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @03:38PM (8 children)
If the law as written says that national security trumps freedom of speech, then the law needs to be rewritten.
If a nation can't exist in prosperity and security living by its core principles, then its core principles are wrong and must be changed.
If a nation cannot survive when freedom of speech is absolute, then stop pretending that it can. Amend the law, explicitely list the exceptions to free speech, and move on.
Or reaffirm your core principles, accept the consequences on national security, and again move on.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either congress can make laws "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", or it can't. Make up your damn mind.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 20 2020, @05:05PM (3 children)
Nobody who really considered the issues, from the founding fathers forward, ever thought that freedom of speech meant absence of secrets.
As long as international "diplomacy" consists of falsehoods deniable because of secrecy and as long as "enemies of the state" are such a threat that their pursuit and surveillance requires secret operations, there will be secrets in government including: reading the national post, tapping of phone calls, broad recording and interpretation of wireless signals, and here forward: such digital communications and metadata as can be accessed by the concerned agencies.
It's nothing new, and it's only as outrageous as the willfully ignorant pretend it to be.
We should continue to strive for transparency in government and police operations, demand ever greater amounts of surveillance data on the watchers and ever shorter intervals of mandatory release of that data. We can only expect that transparency to become absolute when there are no enemies of the state, and that can only be determined when we have absolute and complete surveillance of the complete population of the world - which is another modern trend, but one which I do not wish to ever reach its absolute logical conclusion.
In other words: be careful what you wish for.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:53AM (2 children)
There's a rather large difference between "I am going to keep this secret" and "You cannot tell anyone this".
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:22AM (1 child)
I worked for a company that laid everybody off - the day before Christmas vacation, cancelling payment of the Christmas-New Year week of paid holiday. Then they circulated a letter requesting all employees to sign, individually, affirming - in part - that they would never reveal the existence of the letter and further a ton of employee shall not sue the company, etc. etc. I asked what we get in return for signing? Nothing. Well, then, clearly I chose not to sign - and also withdrew my 401(k) ASAP. If I were of a litigious sort, I might have dragged them through court for unconscionable contract, but I don't think they were faking about being out of money so any judgements won would likely have been in line behind creditors of prior obligations - besides, I have better things to do with my life than continue to play with losers. Which is why we also decided to leave town after that particularly sad episode, it wasn't the first there - but, thankfully, it has been the last to affect us.
Voluntary gag orders are a thing. National security is a thing. In case of OP, I think National security is a small limp fig leaf attempting to cover the gross abuses of law and order happening behind it, far more ridiculous and egregious than my ex-employer - but, that's the thing about secrets: as long as they're successfully kept, no one will ever know.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tangaroa on Tuesday April 21 2020, @09:51PM
A similar thing happened at my workplace. A promotion came with a clause that I would never take the company to court for any reason but would instead agree to "arbitration" by a fake judge of the company's choosing. That obviously nullifies the entire contract and leaves me with no standing if they ever break their side of it. I asked them to strike that one clause. Contracts are supposed to be negotiated, right? I was willing to turn down the promotion and continue working under my old contract.
They responded by flying a guy out from the head office to tell the managers that I was trying to steal their trade secrets before he took me in for a private interview where he tried to get me to admit to that by asking me questions in slang and slanted terms so that both 'yes' and 'no' would have been an admission of guilt. I politely explained that all I wanted was to change one line in the contract, and if there ever was a legal dispute it would be resolved in a court of law.
He told the managers that I was angry and a threat of workplace violence when I was mostly just quiet and wondering what the hell he was trying to do because it did not seem like a contract negotiation was coming from his side of the table. He fired me, forbid the other employees from speaking to me, and then tried to get me to sign a statement that I had voluntarily resigned. I refused to sign.
Then the company sued me to prevent me from receiving unemployment from the state. I did not know about this until my claim was denied because a judge somewhere had already issued a finding of fact that I was not fired and had voluntarily resigned. I learned that this kind of thing does happen, and probably more often than you hear about, and you can't really trust the courts to set things straight.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Monday April 20 2020, @06:51PM (1 child)
When you graduate, get a job and move out of Mom's house, you'll find out that the world isn't just black or white but infinite shades of gray.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @07:46PM
When you learn to read a post, you'll understand that the fact that the real world isn't just black and white was exactly my point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @06:30AM (1 child)
The problem is that judges don't want to take responsibility for ruling against the government when it comes to these things on the off chance that terrorists successfully exploit it. As long as that's the case, we'll have the government continuing to overreach and getting away with it. It's sad that even extremely unconstitutional ideas like the constitution-free zones that encompass huge swathes of the US don't seem to be a problem. Nor do the various blacksites that the US has operated for decades, where neither the American constitution nor any other laws seem to apply. In situations like that, the US constitution should apply as the people involved are all doing the work of our government.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:23PM
Yeah, people like to "misunderstand". Constitutional rules applies to American authority, no matter where it is or who it confronts.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @03:56PM (3 children)
Stop trying to interfere with national security. The government has been working on a major case for almost four years now... apparently a terrorist (no doubt a Muslim or a Mexican criminal) has been using Twitter to post tweets that make it look as if the President of the USA is mentally deranged.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @03:59PM
Hopefully they solve this case before November!
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @09:25PM (1 child)
Nah... It was only Pelosi attempting to string slurred words into a coherent sentence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:54PM
You still falling for those Russian deep fakes? [politico.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kitsune008 on Monday April 20 2020, @05:12PM (9 children)
I must be overlooking the obvious here, but I truly do not understand how revealing the number of requests would do 'grave harm' to national security.
I would welcome any rational/reasonable explanation, but would settle for a truthful one. I suspect that truthful will not be rational, or reasonable. :-(
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @05:20PM
there is no rational explanation. the judge is just another whore, plain and simple.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday April 20 2020, @05:27PM
It would reveal the sheer magnitude of the government's incompetence and waste. A jillion security requests to TWITTER of all fucking cesspools, just to find out what everyone had to eat for breakfast, the size of the dump everyone took, how their cats are doing, and which clips of Family Guy they watched. Even a single request to that drooling stupid web site is too many.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 20 2020, @05:40PM
By definition, the truthful explanation is classified and will not be told to the general public.
Rational? One might rationally argue to a judge that the release of any information about government information requests provides "the enemy" insight into the government's surveillance operations - then by wild extension - putting at risk the lives of our surveillance personnel around the world. Reasonable? No. A good government surveillance organization would "noise up" the data provided to the public such that any increase or decrease observed from the outside is more likely to be noise than signal.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by slinches on Monday April 20 2020, @06:54PM
The only way I can think of that the count itself is a national security concern is if the numbers were so large that it means all available data on every twitter user is being polled daily. The public becoming aware that the government is watching everyone in that level of detail could certainly be the cause of a "national security" issue.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Monday April 20 2020, @08:29PM (3 children)
If the people knew the extent of it, they would demand that it stop and use more encryption, and that would make the DEA and FBI feel less secure.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:27AM (2 children)
If all the people knew the extent of it, a few more of the idiot criminals would start using encryption instead of mainstream chat apps.
It doesn't take much I.Q. to download and use Signal, QTox, or any one of a thousand other encrypted chat apps. People using Twitter for criminal activities are like mob thugs posing for photos by passing tourists after they beat up a shop keeper with a baseball bat.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 21 2020, @06:21PM (1 child)
Nobody said crooks were smart. But if our national security can actually be threatened by a few low IQ crooks, what does that say about our national security?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 21 2020, @06:38PM
Our national security only ever caught the low IQ crooks, the high IQ crooks are running the show.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @06:35AM
The real issue is that it might cause the American people to object to the abuse of power. At some point, Americans need to stop being such cowards and actually vote the jackasses out of office that are doing things like this.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday April 20 2020, @05:21PM
A transparent mass surveillance operation, just like the other soshill media corps.
Oh and censorship too [washingtontimes.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @06:30PM
Oh wait, MAGA was a lie as is pretty much everything Trump says.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/federal-judge-who-slammed-ag-barr-obtains-unredacted-version-of-mueller-report/ [lawandcrime.com]
https://freedomjournal.org/federal-judge-to-review-full-unredacted-mueller-report/ [freedomjournal.org]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday April 20 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
did the thought "yeah, probably pictures of her getting hot and heavy with some underage teen while hubby was away" cross anyone's mind after reading that?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:50AM
No
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday April 20 2020, @06:35PM
Are there even enough spare bits around to declare them? Perhaps they could invent some kind of colour-wheel to indicate an approximate number, that way they don't have to tell the actual number ... not sure but something in the spectrum of holy-shit-brown or hell-frozen-over-blue perhaps?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday April 20 2020, @06:47PM (35 children)
Secret Laws
Secret Interpretations of Laws
Secret Courts
Secret Warrants
Secret Court Orders
Secret Arrests (in the middle of the night)
Secret Trials
Secret Evidence (not made available to the defense)
Secret Convictions
Secret Prisons
Secret "enhanced interrogation" programs
Gee, it sounds like we've become everything we were fighting against in the previous century.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @07:06PM
Yup.
Brought to you by Hollywood, where every good guy ends up sadly having to torture the bad guy to save the girl. And the CSI/Doctors/Detectives/PIs need to break-and-enter private residences to save the day. Oh, can't forget all the illegal wire tapping and intimidation. But its ok, cause law enforcement always finds the truth and justice is always served. Or something like that, yeaaaaah.
Pay no mind to the numerous examples of people getting shady shit through TSA's invasive security theater, the voting machines so easily hacked and left unguarded in various storage rooms, the over reaching mass surveillance recording and tracking innocent civilians. Yup, pay no mind!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 20 2020, @09:58PM (33 children)
Become? Yes, but that's not new. While Soviet soldiers were busy destroying the Hungarian revolution, with great loss of life, the US was nearly finished destroying a democratically elected Guatemalan government, not for the first or last time. For example
Every bad thing the Soviets did, the US did too. Often at exactly the same time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 21 2020, @10:17AM (2 children)
Actually, I think the Soviets, and then the Nazis took lessons from us, and from the Turks. We had a native population to eradicate long before the Soviets came along. Of course, Hollywood spend decades glorifying that whole "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:58PM (1 child)
So why do you keep trying to deny reality [politico.com] then?
Did your TDS become mentally terminal?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 22 2020, @12:42AM
I don't think anyone denies, the Russians were messing with the election. There have always been a couple questions though. What was the significance of that that interference? How much effort was put into that interference? Was there collusion between the Trump campaign, and Moscow?
From your own partisan side of things, I guess there was a lot of significance, while from most R's viewpoint, there was zero significance. I think there was little. The Russians threw a few million dollars into the effort. Some chump change. It was an experiment, and some dumb Americans fell for it.
4chan, 8chan, and the like put more effort into the election than the Russians did. And, yes, some dumb Americans fell for those efforts, as well.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:11PM (29 children)
Like Whataboutism. The US was terrible about that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:28PM (1 child)
But what about ad hominem attacks that ignorant fools use to distract from whataboutism?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 21 2020, @04:39PM
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 21 2020, @09:13PM (26 children)
What point are you trying to make?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @12:46AM (25 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 22 2020, @01:06AM (24 children)
Oh, right. A poor point poorly made.
No guesses for who is the lesser of the two offenders then.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @03:41AM (23 children)
There shouldn't be! After all, only about two dozen present day countries can point to the end of the USSR for their freedom!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 22 2020, @04:35AM (22 children)
How many Latin American countries can point to the end of the USA for their freedom?
Cuba has managed it, can't think of any others though. That's probably whataboutism though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @05:20AM (21 children)
Zero. Should tell you something.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 22 2020, @06:54AM (20 children)
What would it tell me? They keep losing. except Cuba.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @02:02PM (19 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 22 2020, @10:20PM (18 children)
My point is that every bad thing America accused the USSR of doing, the US also did.
The rest of the world knows that as hypocrisy.
If you choose to keep on thinking that your side are the good guys, then feel free. You're not though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @02:49AM (17 children)
Like killing tens of millions of their own people? Your point is wrong.
Except, of course, when it's not. I think rather that equating a greater evil with a lesser one is a bit more hypocritical.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 23 2020, @03:16AM (16 children)
You've heard of Native Americans haven't you? You probably think of them as Indians.
If there had been tens of millions of them, that is how many your government would have murdered to get their land.
Do you know why the plains bison were hunted to almost extinction? Because the Plains tribes depended on them as a food supply. Just for example. But yeah, you're the good guys.
Did they teach the Trail of Tears when you went to school?
Seriously dude, every example you have for some terrible thing the USSR did, I have one the US did.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @02:39PM (15 children)
"IF". Once again, equating the murder of tens of thousands with the murder of tens of millions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @04:32PM
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 23 2020, @08:21PM (13 children)
Right. Which is my point.
You are happy for the US to overthrow democratically elected governments, and murder native peoples, because the raw numbers of deaths are lower.
That is a very low bar you're setting.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @08:57PM (12 children)
You're the only "happy" one here conflating evils that differ by three orders of magnitude.
Says the person who doesn't care if tens of thousands of people or tens of millions of people die.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @09:49PM (11 children)
And an order of magnitude in the time scale.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 23 2020, @10:04PM (10 children)
Wow.
So genocide has to happen. There's just no other way. Luckily we only have to murder a few tens of thousands of people to get what we want.
Not like those other murders, who had to murder millions. They're the real bad guys.
Your number are bullshit by the way. [wikipedia.org]
Don't forget all those times those fruit companies needed their slave revolts put down, so you sent the marines in. [wikipedia.org]
Or that time your CIA sold cocaine to Americans to fund the attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government. [wikipedia.org]
But sure. Communism is bad and we're the good guys.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @11:06PM (9 children)
Your words, remember that.
Your link doesn't support that claim. I do seem to be in error according to this link [hawaii.edu] which sports an estimate of 600k deaths from 1607 to 1890 for American Natives (line 208). I don't know whether the estimate includes the region of Canada (which also has a high number of deaths, mostly under UK governance). But at least for the US itself, we're in the tens of thousands of range (from massacres during the Revolutionary War through to 1890 and the massacre of ghost dancers, including the Great Plains wars and the Trail of Tears).
Or the time we starved 3.5+ million Ukrainians because they were causing problems for Moscow? Funny how the Holodomor, which is only part of the vast harm of the USSR by itself dwarfs every evil that you mentioned about the US. Communism really is bad, and the people who can't come within even two orders of magnitude of the death count really are the good guys.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 23 2020, @11:20PM (8 children)
Wow. The one thing the USSR never really got right was their propaganda. You've completely drowned in the kool-aid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 23 2020, @11:26PM (7 children)
Sounds to me like that propaganda worked great on you. The real problem here is that USSR propaganda can only go so far to hide 60 million bodies.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday April 24 2020, @12:04AM (6 children)
You're still arguing that it's just a numbers game, as if that makes a difference. You're the one who can't see past the propaganda you've lived with your entire life.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @12:13AM (5 children)
So will you really claim that 60 million more deaths in the territory of the US doesn't make a difference? Else, I've called your bluff.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday April 24 2020, @01:34AM (4 children)
In a thread about secret laws and secret courts in your country you're still just arguing semantics.
You've decided it's just a numbers game.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @01:50AM (3 children)
I'm arguing harm. It beats arguing profound innumeracy, like saying that up to 600k of mass murdering over 400 years is like 60 million of mass murdering over the past century and any opinion of the relative harm of killing that many people is just drinking the kool aid.
Doubling down with the claim [soylentnews.org] that the US would murder 60 million native Americans over any relevant time scale, if somehow it were given the opportunity. In other words, damning the US for things it didn't do! Yet another owned goal.
There is an enormous moral blindness here. To you, it doesn't matter how many people are hurt. It doesn't even matter, if the evil doesn't actually happen. And for some strange reason you think this is about "semantics"? Sorry, there's no reason to take your opinion on "secret laws and secret courts" seriously when you are so morally blind.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday April 24 2020, @02:11AM (2 children)
Wow. That is so weird that you're even trying to argue morality just because numbers of dead.
And you call me morally blind.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @12:21PM
It can't be moral otherwise.
You just proved it again.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @12:32PM
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:41AM (2 children)
So, they're not going to take this to the supreme court?
Or did they already take it to the top court, so secret we can't know what was discussed, and far more top than the Supreme court?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 21 2020, @10:18AM
I think appeals in the secret court system are handled by your jailers. You might appeal for extra pudding with dinner, or some such, but you're not going to get it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:39PM
Every single one of the secrets I enumerated (using strong static typing) has been a public scandal in the last 20 years.
There were arguments over having secret laws and secret interpretations of laws. I remember one of the counter arguments to secret laws were that it people knew about the law, they would avoid the bad behavior that violated the law. So if I knew there was a law against jaywalking, I might not jaywalk. As for secret interpretations, a similar argument was that if the bad guystm knew how the law would be interpreted, they would alter their behavior to evade the laws while still doing bad-thingstm.
It is well known there are secret courts. FISA court, for example. By secret, I mean the mere existence of, if not also the operations of these courts. Thus secret court orders, warrants and trials thus follow.
We already know about secret arrests of people who are black-holed to gitmo or even worse facilities. We know of secret CIA torture. This is the secret convictions, prisons and enhanced interrogation techniques -- which we all know about.
There have been scandals about secret evidence. The prosecution could secretly present their secret evidence. But because the evidence was secret, the defense could not have access to it. Because it is secret! I'm not thinking of Stingray, but this almost falls into the relm of what I'm talking about. I'm thinking about "omg it would reveal sources and methods if the defense knew how we obtained and manufactured this evidence against the defendant!"
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.