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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: 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..