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posted by on Monday January 09 2017, @07:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-go-first-wikileaks-task-force dept.

WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations.

"We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships," WikiLeaks tweeted Friday.

The disclosure organization, run by Julian Assange, says the information would be used for an artificial-intelligence program. But Twitter users immediately fired back, saying WikiLeaks would use the list to take political vengeance against those who criticize it.

Twitter "verifies" certain users, such as world leaders, nonprofit organizations and news outlets, with a blue check mark beside their names so that other users of the service can be confident about the posters' identities. WikiLeaks, which has a verified Twitter account, did not say whether it would subject itself to the scrutiny it was proposing. (It was also unclear whether, under its plan, WikiLeaks would seek to uncover information about the financial lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom are verified on Twitter.)

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday January 09 2017, @08:08PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 09 2017, @08:08PM (#451590)
    Verified accounts on Twitter are accounts of celebs or other people that Twitter feels (for one reason or another) are prominent enough that their accounts should be "verified" so that people can know that yes, that is that William Shatner's twitter account. It shows up as a little blue check mark with their account name.

    So basically Wikileaks wants to build a dox database of celebs, politicians, and reporters.
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Monday January 09 2017, @08:57PM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday January 09 2017, @08:57PM (#451622) Journal

    So basically Wikileaks wants to build a dox database of celebs, politicians, and reporters.

    When you go back and read their whole plan, it was much less of a doxing, and more of a linking of associates, friends, twitter pals, etc. I call it yanking the socks off the hands.

    For every verified twitter user there are probably 4 to 6 fake duplicate sock-puppet accounts, friends, useful idiots, employees, and hangers on, all of which exist to retweet and promote the celeb. It would be useful to know when a fawning tweet out of the blue lived in the same house as the celeb.

    (And when I say it would be useful, I mean that in the strictly theoretical sense, because twitter is another of those services I've heard about but refuse to join.)

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 09 2017, @10:46PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday January 09 2017, @10:46PM (#451701) Journal

    Maybe there's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge "legitimate" reason for collecting address/contact info for these folks.

    Hard to see what possible legitimate reason there could be to collect their family-member's info, though.