This is a welcome message, especially seeing Twitter continue to fight for their freedom of speech in court (Twitter v. Lynch), along with the host of other Internet service companies.
While I understand government agencies' desires to investigate persons of interest, the checks and balances of the system were put in place to do just that – check and balance the power of the system. It's outrageous that agencies feel they can side-step these checks and leave out the need to get a judge's approval for these kinds of things.
A response from the Internet Archive (2016) also stated:
> The NSL we received includes incorrect and outdated information regarding the options available to a recipient of an NSL to challenge its gag. Specifically, the NSL states that such a challenge can only be issued once a year. But in 2015, Congress did away with that annual limitation and made it easier to challenge gag orders. The FBI has confirmed that the error was part of a standard NSL template and other providers received NSLs with the same significant error. We don’t know how many, but it is possibly in the thousands (according to the FBI, they sent out around 13,000 NSLs last year).
I wonder what kind of legal action could even be taken against this kind of treatment (being given wrong / outdated information on legal options)?
I may be in the minority, but I still think these companies are being cowardly.
They disclose as soon as they're permitted to, but the trouble with that is that the permission is coming from the people who are the problem in the first place.
An approach that would care about customers and show some more guts would be simple refusal. In essence, civil disobedience in the face of someone who is violating the law. Let the government take them to court, and let it be disclosed in that way.
Before we applaud them too much, keep in mind they're also telegraphing that this behavior is continuing. It doesn't take much skill to read between the lines and see that this is an ongoing problem for them, there's just a lot more of it that's happened that they're not allowed to disclose yet.
The company officers or agents who were served with the letter could be held personally liable for failure to comply with the order. I think it's a little unfair to expect employees to go to prison for contempt of court in defiance of the order.
Yes, that could happen. But there's the Spider-Man Rule: "with great power comes great responsibility".
They're running a major international media outlet over there, and they do have some pretty heavyweight responsibilities that come with that, even if it conflicts with their personal lives.
You're only observing how we're caught in this trap, you're not providing any constructive way out.
Sure, it's unreasonable to expect this of people. It's also unreasonable for the government to expect they'll help in spying on their customers. It's also unreasonable for the government to do this in the first place.
Everything's unreasonable. Someone has to step...the...fuck...up. And the government has demonstrated it won't be them.
Who does that leave? Would it be better to kick back, admire the problem, and simply let things continue as they are?
You aren't providing one [constructive way out] either. It's not Twitter's or any other company's fault, yet you want them to pay the price in form of risk. Why don't you pay it yourself?
Well, no one can prove what they'd do if they were in this situation. But I can't pay this cost for twitter, because the government hasn't asked this of me.
I don't believe they'd go to jail though. I do believe they'd cause an utter shitstorm for themselves personally and professionally though, but that they'd get a lot of attention to the matter and come out the other side OK. I can think of at least 5 non-profits who would jump to pay their legal costs, just to be in the battle and stick it to the government if this sort of thing ever came up.
What do you think the real consequences of standing up to the government are? Publicity is mostly my bet. Note that if we're dealing with the CEO of twitter, hustling him off to a secret prison somewhere with no trial isn't an option, as that's the same as setting off a big media bomb.
But you know, nobody wants to be inconvenienced, and it is a risk, so I suppose many people feel that's adequate justification for twitter to do nothing and keep serving punch to the crowd.
Right. So I think you and I agree on some element of responsibility and that it feels too convenient for those companies to just say "sorry, there is nothing we can do". On the other hand, I think it's clear now how things generally play out behind the scenes, so at leats we as users of those services can either stop using them entirely, or seek alternatives that are hosted overseas (relative to US) and where US jurisdiction is weaker. That would secure us a bit as individuals, but it does nothing for the big picture. I don't see a clear way out.
They're being paid a great deal of money on the theory that their jobs have a lot of responsibility. If they choose to ignore whatever parts of that responsibility they can get away with, perhaps they don't actually deserve that compensation after all.
Anyone who risks their own wellbeing for the greater good is usually applauded, for good reason: it is not expected.
Edit: if you'll pardon the expression, it takes serious balls to put your entire way of life on the line. Yes, history sometimes venerates the brave...sometimes posthumously....so it all might seem glamorous. But it's a lot harder than that in real time, when you don't know what will come of it.
That's why disclosure needs to start at the top and come from someone big enough to survive the fallout. If (for example) Zuckerberg genuinely wanted to do good and grew a pair, he'd do it. He's too busy exploiting your data to get rich and virtue signaling via acquisitions though.
They might, but he'd have better odds than your average Joe (and certainly a better legal team).
"With great power comes great responsibility" isn't just a line from a movie. Of course we can choose not to hold our leaders to high expectations, but that leads to a markedly worse world for the rest of us.
> I may be in the minority, but I still think these companies are being cowardly.
I don't know. Seems really easy to say when it's not you on the receiving end. But I mostly agree about your other points I just have a hard time judging them too harshly for not wanting to risk their business and / or personal freedoms.
It's good that they're disclosing this, but they are not doing anything particularly brave. While it's understandable that they would choose not to put their business at risk, a true act of bravery would be to refuse the requests in the first place.
> An approach that would care about customers and show some more guts would be simple refusal. In essence, civil disobedience in the face of someone who is violating the law. Let the government take them to court, and let it be disclosed in that way.
Is that how it works? You can refuse anything the government tells you to do until they take you to court and the court orders you?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, you make it messy for them and you do probably defeat their primary objective, which is secrecy.
How do you think they'd respond? With SEAL Team 6 while keeping everything quiet?
When the government shows up to force you to turn over the information, no violence is required, but you can make sure the newspapers are there when it happens, and that the knowledge of it happening is not restricted to a few execs, keeping key technical people in the dark (as happened at Yahoo)
> How do you think they'd respond? With SEAL Team 6 while keeping everything quiet?
Possibly by taking you to court and convicting you of breaking some law by refusing to provide the information the first time, perhaps even completely independently of whether or not the order was actually constitutional. I can imagine lots of bad outcomes that would land you in jail without giving you the chance to take the actual issue to court.
But when dealing with a corporate entity, who do you go after? Since this sort of coercion seems to only work on an individual level, going after the entire corporate entity won't invoke the same emotional response.
I don't know how the law works. But my completely-unfounded guess is that whoever is supposed to authorize this and who is refusing would be the one convicted.
You give them limited access and rights, to do what you want them to do. Here, they would have access to communications with government agencies, ability to tweet users or groups thereof, and perhaps responsibility for canary management.
There may be additional penalities/costs for letting it get to the point where a court is involved, but yeah, seems like this falls under "due process of law."
Well that's what I mean, it's not like you can just wait for the court to serve you the order. If the additional penalty is that you'll end up in jail or something, then this isn't really realistic is it?
But are there no laws that require you to abide by these kinds of orders and challenge them differently? Couldn't you be later convicted of not abiding by those laws independently of whether the orders were themselves legal/constitutional?
While I agree with the spirit or what you say, that could backfire very poorly. Suppose that the NSL were sent as part of an investigation on someone planning some sort of attack, such as a mass shooting, and disclosing the NSL ends up exposing that and causing it to fail. The blowback would end up providing stronger support for secrecy.
Unlikely, but possible - and when you're the one making the decision to disobey, you have to consider it. I don't know what I would do in that situation, honestly.
I think the correct approach is not a gag order that makes it illegal to disclose an NSL, but that an NSL should be accompanied with an explanation of what it is for and what the stakes are. A presumption of good faith in the organization to act in best interests, but leaving the ability to disclose to disclose to the public if it is felt that the NSL is in the wrong.
Do these releases get media coverage? Is anyone talking about the various lawsuits and blog posts about public releases of NSLs by tech companies?
I wish the NYTimes and WaPo spent as much time caring about this stuff as they did about being the non-critical mouthpiece for various "anonymous intelligence officials". There is definitely a story that could be made out of this plus the Cloudflare, Google, etc posts... so hopefully I'm proved wrong in this assessment.
> While the actual NSLs request a large amount of data, Twitter provides a very limited set of data in response to NSL
I'm curious just how much they asked for here. I'm guessing it's the user plus 2 hops of anyone they talked to? Including:
- DMs
- t.co links clicked on
- IP addresses when accessing twitter
- device IDs, browser, OS, etc
- phone numbers
- visits to URLs of 3rd party web pages containing embedded tweets? (not sure if this is tracked via cookie)
That could turn out to be plenty of data but I don't believe a single users data would be referenced by Twitter as "a large amount of data", it's very likely at least one hop or more, but who knows.
If you read the actual letters, you'll see they ask for
"the name, address, length of service, and electronic communications transactional records for all services, as well as all accounts, provided to the individual(s) or identifier(s) listed below."
The letter explicitly says not to provide information "that would disclose the content of any electronic communication".
Not all user-generated content on Twitter is public. I couldn't possibly know what kinds of transactional records have been requested or the distribution therein, but DMs seem like plausible targets.
Twitter need to pull their finger out and get end-to-end encryption sorted on their DM's. I mean they onced acuihired Moxie and Whisper Systems yet they still don't have this in place? Many journalists and others are finding that Twitter is the place where initial contact with people/public/sources is being made first, because it's so easy to find and reach out to people. Yet they have no e-2-e on that. Even Facebook/WhatsApp, Google 'Allo, Telegram and of course, Signal are doing a better job then them.
What does end-to-end encryption mean for a tool with browser-based interfaces and where people often log on from multiple devices? I'm having trouble imagining how I'd do safe and easy key management between my phone, the old phone I stuck to my fridge, my tablet, and then Chrome and Firefox on my work laptop, my personal laptop, and that old laptop that hangs out by the couch for use when I'm watching TV.
I also don't see how end-to-end encryption would help for the sort of data apparently asked for here, which is metadata. If the feds get a warrant to find out who a particular government employee DMed, it would seem that encrypting the contents of the DMs wouldn't help if it's @nytimes they contacted.
The sender sends it to multiple devices, each with a different key.
I know that Signal messages can be sent to mobile and desktop at the same time, and it is seamless to do so. The sender does not even know that they are sending it to two devices
If they did, they would be the one holding the keys, not the user. The proposed solution also ignores the new-device case. If you install Twitter on your new phone, log in, and look at your DMs,you expect the whole history to be there. But if messages are encrypted for each device at time of transmission, then the new phone starts blank.
Although they could have just sent it onto the intended target and gone quietly about their day, I'm really glad that Twitter made this an announcement. Do they have any kind of warrant canary system?
I was just thinking about this - what kind of system could work in these circumstances? Say someone had to press a button every hour otherwise an automatic public release gets sent - the government could simply imprison the person for not pressing it. Say no-one knew who is supposed to press it because of some system of randomness and crypto, then you just threaten the CEO with imprisonment for not dismantling the whole thing. It seems only a fully decentralized organization could get away with it. Thoughts?
preface: I'm not the person you want for thoughts on this from, there are clearly smarter people to ask.
I guess it would have to work like a dead-man switch, in that not taking action triggered it. The way I understand the law is that they can force you to omit details about it i.e. "I refuse to comment", but they can't make you lie about it. I wonder if, believing that "omitting details" to be morally/religiously wrong, could you argue that it is preventing your freedom of religion?
Ultimately though, I agree that only a fully decentralized organization would work. I'd be open to other ideas, but I've never heard of one that avoids the issues that you mention above.
Why not just tape it to the front door? Its directed at the company right? then anybody working there can read it. The secrecy fetish and end around court warrants is disgusting.
I think I missed the thread of this discussion. What would the press releases say? Under what circumstances would someone not be able to press the button?
Is there some kind of database anyone is keeping that helps the public figure out what information companies have been ordered to produce in the past, and what they have actually produced? (I don't specifically mean NSLs here -- subpoenas and any other things would all be included in my question.)
This would be useful in several respects, because it would not only provide a check on the government, but it would also provide a check on the companies. For example, can I be sure that if I delete something, and a company with my data claims it is deleted in 60 days, can I rely on it to be true? If the company has been ordered to produce such information in the past, knowing whether or not it has done so would seem to be the most foolproof way to figure out how much data the company retains or discards. Is anyone keeping such records publicly (insofar as the information is available)?
Like the internet archive letters, these are only released as a legal error on the part of the FBI made regarding the ability to challenge the order. This is not the government deciding to lift the order voluntarily, and is not a sign of more transparency from their end.
No. The DOJ has standardized on Courier for a font, and Courier's a built in font on pretty much all decent word processing programs and printers. The State Department used to use it too, but switched to Times New Roman some years ago.
In general for anyone conscious about freedom of speech and press it should alarming how certain agencies breach people's data and then put gag orders in place. This isn't freedom, this is tyranny.
The citizens of North-Korea probably have more freedom that then the citizens of USA.
Comments like this are worse than useless, in that people see them and dismiss them as hysterical hyperbole-- because they are-- and thereby become inoculated against more credible warnings of real danger.
I've been to both places. While Americans are not free, and can indeed be tortured for saying the wrong things to the wrong people, the retribution in the DPRK is much more swift and broadly applied.
Is this the same Twitter that has allegedly shadowbanned Scott Adams multiple times for his political positions? If Twitter is interested in transparency, how about some transparency on that? Twitter's actions make me distrust any "transparency" talk, even if I disagree with Adams on certain things.
How would anyone actually prove something like this, short of getting Twitter to admit it? What he has seen is:
> my tweets only go out to a subset of my followers. The rest don’t know I tweeted. My followers tell me this is the case. They have to visit my timeline to see my tweets.
What other proof could anyone realistically provide?
That is how twitter works - it doesn't show every tweet from everyone you follow in your timeline, it shows a subset based on what it considers most relevant.
It's a bigger problem in general with both Twitter/FB and how they filter the order content is displayed (sometimes called "the filter bubble") in order to drive up engagement and revenue.
The average person doesn't care about federated social networks and the average dev or admin doesn't have the time outside of work to setup and maintain one for his or herself.
It's interesting to me that you probably don't care that this isn't true, nor is it true that Twitter ever decides to not show your tweets to a subset of your followers through a "shadowban". You just say whatever. Doesn't affect you whether it's true or not and if other people believe you, hey that's pretty funny that people just believe things you make up or misunderstood.
That's why I almost never use the Twitter web site or their app. Too confusing. I stick with Tweetbot which still only shows the complete timeline in reversed chronological order.
> That is how twitter works - it doesn't show every tweet from everyone you follow in your timeline, it shows a subset based on what it considers most relevant.
If this is true, this is the same as Facebook does.
And for this reason I can't bother checking Facebook any more. Can't see what's in that for twitter?
Facebook is not showing me the posts from people I know, but instead advertisement and "reactions" it thinks I may like. Which I give a utter fuck about.
It's just another one of those things which just makes me stop caring.
If twitter knows what best for them, they should definitely not copy this UX anti-pattern of overruling the users explicit choice (about whose posts they want to follow).
And it would be convenient if Scott Adams' political tweets were considered "irrelevant" more often than others, wouldn't it?
There were also reports that followers would be automatically unfollowed. They wouldn't hear from Scott for a while, so they'd check and realize he was no longer followed. Maybe they slipped and accidentally hit "Unfollow" while scrolling through their feed one day. Maybe it was a one-time glitch. Or maybe it wasn't.
While it's true that such things could easily be imaginary, it's also true that they easily could not be. The idea behind these pseudo-bans is to discourage undesirable users from using the platform, and they do happen on many platforms (can't speak definitively for Twitter).
For example, my HN account was intentionally slowed by YC for years. Each page load would take several seconds. When I asked politely if they could lift it after putting up with it for a couple of years, they confirmed it had been intentionally slowed, but couldn't tell why, and graciously agreed to lift the punishment, which I'm still grateful for. :)
He made a post last summer saying that he has to pretend to support Clinton otherwise when he goes out he'll probably be shot by a Clinton supporter... He's gone a bit off the deep end.
Seeing him post pictures of himself acting in the role of sugar daddy to a petulant child-woman is well beyond my initial scope of interest in him.
My interest was Dilbert. It was all about making fun of the disconnect between management and employees. Ironically, his public persona is now at odds with the general theme of his work.
I suspect his original material is just the byproduct of his initial position and people emailing anecdotes to him.
"If you go to dilbert.com the cartoon comes part and parcel with his blog."
You can see blog titles from his blog if you scroll down and read them.
Is seeing blog titles (if you choose to scroll down and then read them) like "outrage dilution" and "Should twitter and Facebook be regulated as entities" comparable to having to read an anti-Semitic pamphlet?
Chill out. Wagner is just the go to example for divorcing art and the artist.
When I go to dilbert.com, I see a mixture of full blog entries, cartoons, and blog titles. I'm simply not entertained in his attempts at blogging.
Adams has probably gotten a bit bored pushing the same cartoon out and now conflates the value of his blog with his cartoon.
EDIT: Also compare the UX between http://dilbert.com and http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/. With CtrlAltDel, the blog is there, but you don't have to scroll by it and you can completely ignore it. With Dilbert, the blog shows up before the cartoon. It's pushed down your throat.
Personally I adblocked the Dilbert blog posts so I could just enjoy the comics. I'd have done the same if he were posting any other flavor of political rant. If I did not have the ability to block the posts I'd have stopped reading.
If Twitter outright stated "We did not shadowban Scott Adams or otherwise place any restrictions on him, and do not intend to do so in the future", that would be sufficient for me. Usually corporations and people don't outright lie.
Do they also need to assure you that their board of directors is not composed of reptilians? Do they need to respond to every accusation and conspiracy theory, or just the ones without supporting evidence?
It seems like they'd owe it to their investors to at least comment on the ones that make it into news articles, and appear to be worrying a small percentage of their userbase.
Keep in mind, they have a Privacy Policy, a Terms of Service, and dozens of pages on their support site that cover all sorts of issues in great detail. Surely it's at least worth a sentence in their ToS and a tweet from a middle-manager, even if the accusations are completely bogus?
Personally, I put the probability at around 30%, so I think it's more likely to be false than true.
> Realistically, can I quit Twitter and be a successful media personality without it? Not in today’s world. The only way I could make that work is by having a huge presence on Facebook or Instagram.
..seeing something like this come from someone with the name of an infamous Wikipedia troll is just a little bit giggle worthy.
That said, no it isn't. the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.
In other words, it's a way to proclaim "I am a good person!" to the world, usually in a vacuous or shallow way.
The phrase 'virtue signaling' is always meant to convey "public expressing opinions intended to demonstrate one's good character, in a vacuous or shallow way". There's no "usually" about it.
My comment was commenting on someone who wrote (doing a little interpolating here) "It's just Jack(in his role as CEO of twitter) is just virtue signaling, who was commenting on whether Twitter is or is not Twitter is 'shadowbanning' Scott Adams.
It's a nonsense argument, Twitter doesn't shadowban, the commenter is probably also commenting on Jack's very public positions on equality and justice. His public statements are heard by millions. I'm sure he actually means what he says. It's not vacuous or shallow.
I know nothing of this case, nor do I care about SA. Additionally, I believe that all NSL's should be illegal, precisely for the reasons you specify above.
While twitter is not legally obligated to show anything, I am not legally obligated to like them. They are still open to criticism.
It's important to remember that these orders serve a real and necessary role in investigating serious criminals; these individuals are not named prior to trial or if the investigation does not lead to a trial. It should not be assumed that they were being unlawfully persecuted - rather that there was a serious reason for them to be under investigation.
> these individuals are not named, but it should not be assumed that they were being unlawfully persecuted - rather that there was a serious reason for them to be under investigation.
If only there were some way of determining whether they were being unlawfully persecuted or validly investigated.
Do you think it might be a judge? Upon a completed investigation? One which is effective and protects the identities of the investigated prior to any criminal prosecution?
Do you think there should maybe be an oversight board and a congressional committee? Because these things exist. Do you propose something different?
These are the functions which these authorities serve in society.
Why all of these rhetorical questions? There have been hundreds of thousands of these, with only a handful released upon completed investigation. I think a transparent judge, a transparent oversight board, a transparent congressional committee, etc is what is proposed. This is how we know these functions are even being served by authorities in society. Or not being served, such as up until recently where the gag was interminable making your "upon a completed investigation" comment misinformed at the least and your blind faith misplaced.
That's what trials are for. The trial system is deeply imperfect, but investigating someone with a view to putting them on trial is not inherently untoward. You seem to be arguing that a trial should precede an investigation.
And when they do so they complain about judges' willingness to do it. There is no procedural solution that will ever be satisfying to people who wish to return or a technologically simpler time.
Well think about it ... if the investigation or justice proceedings were not completed, or the investigation didn't yield prosecution, thier names would not, and should not be revealed. So which is it? You want full transparency which would cause people to be unlawfully persecuted by the public? Or do you want a functional investigative justice system which protects the identities of the not-proven-guilty?
I ask you with complete sincerity - think it through.
He wants the Constitutional requirement, and the tradition of the separation of powers, to be fulfilled by having a Judge review and sign off on the search. That is all he wants, you are the one imagining insane things.
Go ahead and downvote me, but NSA has a different process than warrants for a reason. There is signoff which satisfies the constitution. Secret court, secret panel. It is secret for a reason and the court is overseen by congress.
However personally I would prefer these cases to be declassified after a reasonalbe amount of time, where it is possible to protect the innocent.
It should not be assumed that they were being unlawfully persecuted - rather that there was a serious reason for them to be under investigation
It's probably just my own crazy notion, but I think we should assume they're innocent until proven guilty in open court. I also have this other crazy idea that the government should obey the fourth amendment to the constitution (i.e. the highest law in the country), and only conduct reasonable searches with a judicially sanctioned warrant. One based on probable cause and a legally actionable oath/affirmation by the government official seeking the warrant.
But I guess reversing the presumption of innocence and pissing on the separation of powers by creating quasi-judiciaries under the executive arm of government is... good...
We should be totally okay with court ordered records requests against specific accounts. That's LEO doing his job. It doesn't look like these two letters were court ordered however. Even so, it was bounded time against two accounts and of course you don't want to tip them off.
It's the bulk tap rooms, such as the AT&T one, that ARE the dragnet and highly abusive of our rights. I feel like this whole NSL release program of late is a distraction tactic to take our attention away from the real abuse.
Except for 1. the extreme secrecy and 2. the matter being policed is essentially speech.
If a crime has been committed for which Twitter is evidence, then arrest the perpetrators and collect the evidence with a standard public search warrant. There isn't even an argument to be made that uncaught co-conspirators could preemptively destroy evidence, as Twitter has it all recorded! But the war on drugs has established this philosophy of cultivating ongoing crime in order to catch ambiguous "higher ups". That kind of "ongoing threat" is only compatible with a totalitarian society.
While I understand government agencies' desires to investigate persons of interest, the checks and balances of the system were put in place to do just that – check and balance the power of the system. It's outrageous that agencies feel they can side-step these checks and leave out the need to get a judge's approval for these kinds of things.
A response from the Internet Archive (2016) also stated:
> The NSL we received includes incorrect and outdated information regarding the options available to a recipient of an NSL to challenge its gag. Specifically, the NSL states that such a challenge can only be issued once a year. But in 2015, Congress did away with that annual limitation and made it easier to challenge gag orders. The FBI has confirmed that the error was part of a standard NSL template and other providers received NSLs with the same significant error. We don’t know how many, but it is possibly in the thousands (according to the FBI, they sent out around 13,000 NSLs last year).
I wonder what kind of legal action could even be taken against this kind of treatment (being given wrong / outdated information on legal options)?