I didn’t want to put this in the article on the coordinated PR campaign, but the fact that one company refuses to cooperate with the US government in the way Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others were more than willing to do, is very, very important. This means that the argument “but we had to do the things we did because Washington told us to” holds no water. Twitter’s refusal proves that the others did not have to say yes – they chose to do so. Whenever someone – a corporate PR person, company blogger, or fanboy – tells you Microsoft, Apple, or Google had no choice, all you need to say is “Twitter”.
Twitter refused to participate, which demonstrates that it is possible to refuse, which means it’s not compulsory, which means I don’t have to worry about the NSA demanding I turn over information about my BBS users.
Until they start changing the rules.
BBS? Really? Is it still 1993, and the last 20 years was all a bad dream? lol
It’s a telnet/ssh BBS and running on an ARM server, so no.
If the report is true (and to be clear, its far from confirmed) then it proves that Twitter disregarded a FISA court order and was in contempt of court.
It was morally the right thing to do, but I can hardly hate a company for not wanting the ire of the militant wing of our government.
No. You got it wrong.
The other companies went *beyond* the legal obligations to please the US government. Twitter just complies with those requirements – but no more.
So they’re legally obliged to comply and decided to do so in the most responsible and secure manner they can.
I would warn you about letting your outrage put the cart before the horse, but we’re way past that, given the like 4-5 articles on the same thing in a days timespan.
Disclaimer: I’m not too familiar with Twitter
I thought everything you posted on Twitter is already publicly accessible – isn’t that true?
The US government could still ask for user passwords, but I don’t know what that could get them.
Well, Google totally denies it, in the strongest possible terms and it apparently took Apple 5 years to get on board so I am not sure it’s fair to say the biggest players have ‘gone beyond’.
And honestly who the fuck cares about Twitter. It’s not like random evil doers make plans over twitter.
(Yeah yeah I agree that spying on everyone because 10 guys play to blow something up is wrong but I am just trying to make a point that no one seriously thinks those 10 guys are going to plan it over twitter.)
From what I read there is no obligation for the companies to make the data disclosure process easier or more efficient. If that’s true Twitter aren’t breaking any rules by telling them to p*** off on an interface or portal to their servers, though they certainly aren’t making any friends in government either.
Edited 2013-06-08 19:51 UTC
Well, companies seems to have little problem being in contempt of court when it’s something that threatens their profits so it’s nice to see one of them standing up for something else.
But maybe that’s exactly what you SHOULD do? Well, maybe not hate but seriously question the company’s ethics and priorities.
Just because they weren’t mentioned does not mean they are innocent or aren’t cooperating in the same manner as any of the others (who are strenuously denying they did anything either).
OTOH, Where’s my blackberry…
The leaked paper that mentions the other participants specifically mentions that Twitter was approached and rejected the offer.
This story came out at this point in time but it doesn’t prove that Twitter would not have been involved in the future.
They all joined in allegedly at different times and if we learned of this back in 2010 than you would be talking about Apple and Twitter.
The one doesn’t disprove the other.
I honestly don’t get it. From the article(s), it sounds like all companies were legally required to do <X>.
As well as doing <X>, the other companies decided to make a process for doing <X> efficiently, such that complying with the law was more efficient (and perhaps more automated / less error prone).
It sounds like the argument is that you should do <X> as inefficiently as possible, because it’s bad. Which is surely the wrong tree to be barking up…
Twitter feeds are publicly broadcast. The security agencies can follow any feed they wish without needing access to private information.
There’s a lot of information on Twitter that isn’t publicly broadcast (or at least not everyone anyway).
In Twitter can work a lot like Facebook or Google+ in that you can have “protected tweets”[1] that only people you’ve authorized can view.
I’m pretty sure the NSA would be more interested in protected tweets than the stuff that any “terrorists” were happy to blindly tell the world.
[1] https://support.twitter.com/articles/14016-about-public-and-protecte…
Are protected tweets only reaching people in a secure and encrypted way, or do they just happen to be only sent to approved subscribers?? In the latter case, I think it would be peanuts for the NSA to listen in.
Protected tweets are just mean that they only appear in approved subscribers feeds rather than anyones. However Twitter defaults to SSL so those protected tweets are still covered with end-to-end encryption. Which means they’re actually just as secure as webmail.
Though I should point out that I’m not advocating using Twitter as a secure means of communication. There’s far far better systems for such things. My point was just that I doubt the NSA would have means to eavesdrop on protected tweets without either being an authorized subscriber or having access to Twitter’s servers (or unless they can create their own CA-signed certs and perform a man in the middle attack)
If the requests are lawful then doesn’t it make sense for these big companies to expedite the information and have efficient processes in place quickly process the requests?
I would expect big software companies to create special systems for handling such requests.
What is this “going above and beyond” what they’re required to do? Sure they weren’t required to set up portals but if they’re going to get the information anyway why not provide it as quickly as possible.
I haven’t heard anything about providing more data than required, the only complaints I’ve seen were about the portals themselves.
I just don’t see it.