[npx]

I'm not convinced that the goal here is actually to obstruct intelligence agencies, I think they'd just use a shell company or flatly demand access if they wanted it. As far as I'm aware, the Library of Congress is archiving all tweets.

It feels like a cheap way to generate press portraying Twitter as a staunch defender of liberty. I'm not sold.

[StanislavPetrov]

Couldn't agree more. In addition to that, the NSA (among other government organizations) sniffs and logs all internet (including Twitter) traffic. Given the unlimited resources of the government to sift, sort, and mine this data (thanks to our taxpayer dollars) it wouldn't be at all surprising if they didn't already construct a superior, parallel analytic system unconstrained by any of the regulations or financial restrictions faced by Twitter.

[sp332]

Twitter is TLS by default, so it wouldn't be very useful to just capture the traffic. They'd have to either MITM (which would be detectable e.g. by the SSL Observatory) or by obtaining Twitter's TLS keys for decryption.

[gknoy]

I no longer feel that believing such things to be in the realm of the NSA's capabilities is an indicator of craziness.

[sp332]

Yeah, and now that I think of it, it would probably be easier to hack the other endpoint (the users' computers). I'm just saying, knowing that the NSA has been recording web traffic doesn't automatically mean they have all the tweets.

[awinograd]

This is a ridiculous claim. The government doesn't have the resources to monitor the entirety of the Internet.

[StanislavPetrov]

Where have you been for the last few years? What resources exactly do you think they lack? Why do you think the NSA just built a 1,000,000 square foot data center in Utah?

https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/buildi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

[tptacek]

"The NSA just built a 1,000,000 square foot data center in Utah" is not, in fact, a rebuttal to the parent comment.

[winteriscoming]

> https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/

FWIW - That's a parody site. However, that's not to disclaim that the Utah data center isn't being built.

[Forbo]

It was completed in September of 2014.

[cm2187]

If you take out porn videos and duplicate js libraries the text traffic is probably not that great!

[cmurf]

Right. And also deduct 90+% likely spam/phishing candidates, and all youtube and Netflix streams and what remains is what, 20%? 10%?

[cm2187]

I'd say less than that. Remove all https traffic, js frameworks, identical images, video, newspapers and major blog entries, and I'd guess the remaining text traffic must be 1-2% of the global traffic.

One thing I'd guess too is that the NSA must have the mother of all password databases. Given all the login forms that went through unencrypted and still do. If I was the NSA that's the first thing I would have captured.

[Mtinie]

I guess it is time to start hiding my sensitive data inside of customized versions of jQuery and Angular! :)

[dangerlibrary]

My understanding is that they store all https traffic to be decrypted later.

[grey-area]

oh tempora oh mores

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

[xerophyte12932]

Yes, but is it really that absurd to think the govt could monitor all twitter traffic and form a superior analytical tool if it wanted to?

[lowpro]

Only the 98% of web traffic that goes through the US.

Although really the other 2% wouldn't be hard to get considering the power they have.

[cyphar]

NSA has partnership with many other nation states. They get much more data than just the data which goes through the US.

[Forbo]

For anyone wanting more information on this, it is commonly referred to as "Five Eyes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

Also of note is the "Future Enlargement" section of that article, where it expands on other partnerships: "Six Eyes", "Nine Eyes", "Fourteen Eyes".

[greglindahl]

LOC was archiving in 2010, but that project is no longer going forward: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/library-of-congress-tw...

[mratzloff]

I have to continually remind myself not to read comments, but, ugh, it's a bad habit. The ones on Politico are really terrible. They're essentially indistinguishable in content from YouTube comments. Everyone thinks of themselves as funny, clever, or insightful, but they're just not. Jesus.

If these archival tweets were around for several hundred years, perhaps they might be interesting to historians in the same way ancient Roman graffiti is. But it seems far more likely to me that this project, even if it does get off the ground, would shut down well before that. I'm not sure Politico comments are that far removed from a lot of tweets... and based on the Politico comments, maybe shutting down that project wouldn't be a bad thing.

[ihsw]

Well, you're probably right that the goal isn't simply to obstruct intelligence agencies. I am guessing that the idea is more than likely to tell them to quit being too demanding and start acting like just another client.

Plus, being involved with the government usually involves all kinds of regulatory nonsense and (sometimes) having their personnel on premises for whatever reason.

In summary it's probably a cost cutting measure to keep legal and engineering teams from getting preoccupied with government nonsense requests, but hey they can spin it as giving a big middle finger to the government so why not.

[jomamaxx]

" to quit being too demanding and start acting like just another client."

Uhm, intelligence agencies are 'not just another client'.

Do any of you have any concept of duty, service, community?

You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?

You do realize that Twitter is a primary propaganda and recruitment tool for some very, very nefarious people?

Of course the debate regarding the level of privacy we ought to have, and what amounts to government overreach must be had, and likely will never cease, but at the same time, this is a serious business. Lives are literally at stake.

"Plus, being involved with the government usually involves all kinds of regulatory nonsense and (sometimes) having their personnel on premises for whatever reason."

God forbid that other people have a responsibilities much greater than themselves, which doesn't involve making money?

I'm not so naive to suggest that government requests may be burdensome, and on occasion due to ill motives, but I suggest that the premise of your statement lacks perspective.

In this particular case, it would seem that the government should at the very least have access to public Tweets, this would be arguably one of the least intrusive measures they could make, after all, a Tweet by you, I, or an ISIS member is definitely 'public domain' in every sense of the term.

I wish there were more details.

[ryan_j_naughton]

>You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?

Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives.

As a comparison, the war on drugs (which a Nixon aid recently revealed was intentionally designed to target his adversaries -- progressives and minorities) has been used as a justification for increased government and police power for years. Now the DEA, FBI, and local police are using parallel construction and keeping their search methodologies out of the purview of the courts.

Even if there is some 'greater good' that our government ideally aims for, the reality of its motivations and actual actuals is far different. Thus, we need not enable further surveillance. If the government wants this data, it is already publicly available and they can build that capacity themselves.

That being said, I agree with most people here that this is mostly for show as they will purchase access through some other means.

The grey area between corporation data collection and government surveillance is interesting though. It puts groups like the ACLU in odd positions -- take drone policy for instance. They believe that "a drone should be deployed by law enforcement only with a warrant, in an emergency, or when there are specific and articulable grounds to believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific criminal act."

But they do not want regulations limiting individual/private use of drones.

It does seem strange to allow a private surveillance fleet but be against a government one. Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?

[effie]

> Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?

This may be inaccurate, but I remember somebody explained to me that only people have rights, governments only have power that is to be restricted. Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights, rather than strengthening of governments with less restrictions.

[ryan_j_naughton]

>Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights

I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict, but in reality that isn't easily accomplished with many of the things we classify as rights today.

If an individual has a right to privacy another individual has a right to freely fly his/her drone over people's houses with a camera, those rights could come in conflict. Thus, it isn't so simple as "ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights". We need to answer which rights, and at what possible expense to other rights.

This is reminiscent of the recent religious liberty vs gay rights fight in the US. As with most of the HN community, I am a supporter of gay rights and don't believe firms should be able to discriminate based on sexual preference. Nonetheless, I think George Will makes some interesting points about conflicting rights in this article[1]:

The case is from back in 2012 when a photographer refused to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony. Going beyond the standard argument of freedom of religion vs right to be free from corporate and government discrimination based on sexual preference, he uses a compelled speech argument:

>Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law thinks that Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”: She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, that express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ...https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...

Given the recent Apple v FBI fight and their possible use of a 'compelled speech argument' to prevent their engineers from writing code they disagreed with, many of us agree that an individual should retain their freedom of speech (and right to be free from compelled speech). This puts me personally in a tricky philosophical predicament because I don't believe the government should be able to compel speech when it is code related to privacy but I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.

I reconcile this contradiction by realizing that we have created a complex web of somewhat conflicting rights, and we need to help find the boundaries, based in large part, on what is best for society.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...

[effie]

> I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict...

I think that would only be possible if the rights were very weak or unnaturally restricted, for example if their validity was restricted to strictly personal region of space. In a free society, people's intents collide and arguments happen.

I don't think your example with drone presents such a collision though, since a person flying a drone does not imply surveillance is happening. Only if the person intentionally uses the drone to violate privacy there is privacy violation.

> I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.

Why should government interfere with people's views on marriage and sexual relations? That is something theocracies do. I think it is basis of free society that anyone is able to express their opinion and act accordingly even if it pisses off somebody else. If the cake maker does not want to do a transaction, the best solution is the homosexual people get the cake elsewhere. I see no reason why government should compel people to do things against their will in this case.

[jomamaxx]

"Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives."

Terrorism is a very, very serious issue that affects a lot of people in the world.

Sadly, it affects mostly Muslims.

Perhaps you missed the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris?

There is a terrible war on right now between various politically aligned entities, one of them being ISIS which is actively trying to attack Western civilians, with more notable success in Europe.

This is very, very real.

Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.

[ryan_j_naughton]

I absolutely agree that terrorism is a very real threat in certain parts of the world. Living in Iraq and Afghanistan, people have up seriously weigh the probability of a bomb exploding when they are in a crowded place. Thus, it absolutely makes sense for their governments to more strongly weigh security against liberty and restrict liberty.

Nonetheless, what I said was "Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans". My point was in the context of the tradeoffs we make in our society given the risks.

For example, our TSA security measures have actually increased deaths in America BC people have substituted to driving when when it would have been a short flight due to the inconvenience of airport security [1].

Since driving is much riskier Han flying, deaths have increased such that more people have died from this effect than from all terrorism in the US since (and including 9/11).

Because the threat of terrorism is extremely small WITHIN the US, our response has been entirely overblown.

A similar example is the surge in gun purchases after the San Bernardino shooting. Gun related accidents from these purchases will undoubtedly cause more deaths than terrorism.

Thus, when making policy (and personal) decisions, we need to do an objective cost/benefit analysis.

The result: it absolutely makes sense to own a gun, have limited freedom of movement, or government surveillance if you live in Afghanistan. In the US, not so much.

>Please read the news beyond Americas borders sometimes.

I'm extremely well read in international policy research. Many of my friends are researchers at RAND corporation, and they focus on international terrorism.

My response to your statement would be that you can't create a generalized policy solution for the whole world. It needs to be contextualized by the situation on the ground.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...

[pdkl95]

> Do any of you have any concept of duty, service, community?

Yes. Duty is important.

> You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I

That's the problem. A lot of people in the intelligence community are serving a cause, but it's not the cause they promised to defend when they swore an oath of office.

    I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the
    Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
    that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
    obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;
    and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on
    which I am about to enter.

They took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to save lives or defend a government. The are betraying their sworn allegiance when they subvert the plain meaning of the 4th Amendment and other constitutional protections.

Snowden is one of the few that fulfilled his duty to the Constitution. Everyone else in the intelligence community that stayed silent instead of reporting rights violations and other crimes is a collaborator that placed personal interest above their duty.

[effie]

> They took an oath to defend the Constitution

Wow, I didn't know that. Well it figures - when oaths or promises like this are demanded by an institution (university, army, government) for the advancement of career, it isn't hard to guess that most people will comply, despite their actual feelings and goals. The whole concept of public oath seems to be in place mainly to maintain the public belief in the institution, rather than actual procurement of allegiance.

[PhasmaFelis]

> You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?

I really want to believe that. I think it would be a better world if I could believe that. But we've seen pretty conclusively that the goals of intelligence agencies don't always line up with the best interests of the citizens they purportedly serve.

So there's a line that has to be walked. How can we give them enough power to defend us, but not enough power to hurt us? We can't; we can only make trade-offs and hope they're the right ones.

This would be so much easier if the people tasked to defend us could be trusted. But they've shown, conclusively, that they can't.

[SyneRyder]

> In this particular case, it would seem that the government should at the very least have access to public Tweets...

They still do. From the article:

"In a statement, Twitter said its “data is largely public and the U.S. government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could.”"

[JustSomeNobody]

Somebody is drinking the "Because Terrorism" milk.

I simply don't believe the values that you bring up exist in Government anymore. We, the American people, have voted for our favorite party affiliation for so long now that the politicians have turned it into sport. It's not about getting people into office that are going to actually do anything (single digit congressional approval anyone?). It is a popularity contest. So, you get the least effective people in the most powerful positions and soon they will have to start cheating to do their job. Trampling on our Bill of Rights is them cheating.

[shrugger]

defender of liberty?

What's anti-liberty about collecting information that people voluntarily show the world? I actually disagree with this decision on the basis that it just eliminates potential business opportunities for Twitter corp.

I mean, if I tweet something, I can't then turn around and get angry at someone who approaches me and says, "Hey, you ran at central park yesterday, I saw it on your twitter." or whatever, because I voluntarily chose to tweet it.

The same goes for anybody else, including intelligence agencies. I can't read past the paywall but I googled around and to my understanding, it's not even the intelligence agencies that are doing it to begin with. These other companies correlate all the data, structure it with an API they provide to the intelligence agencies. So at this point, there's two different types of businesses now suffering from this decision.

I don't even understand why I like twitter so much, they keep doing these stupid, stupid things!

[caseysoftware]

Based on Twitter's share price, they need any positive press they can get at this point.

But fundamentally, as long as Dataminr (as by extension, the Intelligence Community) is only accessing publicly available information purposely broadcast by users, this is pretty innocuous.

If Dataminr/IC was pushing for data from protected accounts, DMs, or other non-public info, then it's a different game.

[Karunamon]

It feels like a cheap way to generate press portraying Twitter as a staunch defender of liberty. I'm not sold.

Especially given Twitter's more censorious habits regarding hashtags..

Anyways, I think there is some small amount of value here. Making it a ToS violation for certain groups to access your service makes it a bit more difficult for such programs to officially continue.

[nv-vn]

I think the point of it is more as a kind of protest than it is to actually obstruct their ability to spy on people.