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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: 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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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