Twitter redox: JAssange is not your friend.

TSRF,

And it’s not really even about Twitter. It could be anything. It’s the idea that Assange thinks it’s okay to set up a secret database from any social media site of his choosing, without anyone’s permission, and with the very real possibility that any average Joe or Jane could be Doxed. Not just Big Wigs. Anyone. At Assange’s own discretion. His choice, like he’s some god or something.

And if he’s willing to tell us about this one particular plan, what about the stuff he doesn’t want to tell us about?

Is he any better than any corporate or government surveillance regime, when he acts like that? Not in my view. He has never once, not ever, asked anyone’s permission before leaking personal information, the vast majority of which has absolutely zero public benefit, and may have actually destroyed the lives of hundreds or thousands of innocent people.

And he’s completely discredited himself this election cycle by choosing to only leak Democratic Party info — again, virtually none of which helps improve quality of life one iota and may have done the opposite. Whether or not he once benefited the public, he isn’t doing that now, and it sounds like he’s turned into a full blown menace.

TSRF wrote:

Hey Billy.

I believe I get what you are saying.

I think WV will back me up here when I say, we all have to be very careful on how we evaluate what the hell is going on around us.

We all live in our own reality tunnels, made by our initial imprinting and reinforced by our social programming.

The way our language is structured causes us to make and receive statements that are absolute: You are wrong. I am right. This is all bullshit. It should be, I believe you are wrong, I think I am right.

I know I am preaching to the choir. Thanks for coming back and good luck with the novel.

Best,
Matt

Thanks, Matt.

I hope you and yours are well.

bnw wrote:

TSRF wrote:

So then why post? You just stated it didn’t affect you. Why were you compelled to post your three word post?

Why not? You seem to think Twitter is some set in stone entity that will allow an unlimited base of ever powerful information? I don’t. Only thing working for Twitter these days is Trump. Facebook, like MySpace before it is on its way down. Twitter will be no different. Besides with the known spying by the government on all its citizens via all forms of electronic communication why is what wikileaks is thinking about such an issue? Twitter is public not private information.

It looks like you didn’t bother reading the article, or the excerpts I posted.

Assange is threatening to steal and perhaps divulge private information that no one puts out on Twitter, by hacking into its database and collecting private info unavailable to the public. That info is private, not public information. Private. Until Assange decides to leak it without anyone’s permission.

One would think this would bother you, whether or not you use Twitter. I don’t. And I don’t have the same kind of exposure on social media that billions of people do these days, especially the young. But it still upsets me. I’m upset for them, and it’s pretty easy to see how this could really hurt millions of people . . . and even put their lives at risk.

Google “Doxing,” for starters.

bnw wrote:

The information is about “verified” users only.

“Twitter “verifies” certain users, such as world leaders, nonprofit organizations and news outlets, with a blue check mark beside their names so that other users of the service can be confident about the posters’ identities.”

In other words wikileaks would be a check on the veracity of the Twitter “verified” user. Where do you see that wikileaks would be “hacking” this information? I don’t see it. As for the AI component that is so abundant these days in so many forms as to be expected. Don’t have to like it but better expect it.

You should continue quoting that part of the article. And add this part near the beginning:

“We are thinking of making an online database with all ‘verified’ twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships,” WikiLeaks tweeted Friday.

Here’s what follows your part of the quote:

WikiLeaks, which has a verified Twitter account, did not say whether it would subject itself to the scrutiny it was proposing. (It was also unclear whether, under its plan, WikiLeaks would seek to uncover information about the financial lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom are verified on Twitter.)

Asked by journalist Kevin Collier why it needed to build a database of dossiers, WikiLeaks replied that the database would be used as a “metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.”

But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.

“This is a good plan. If you’re Darth Vader,” Matthew Green, a professor who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted.

Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, compared the WikiLeaks proposal to a piece of British legislation that has been criticized as a massive boon to the surveillance industry.

“Don’t.even.think.about.it,” he tweeted.

Also, about that praise of Wikileaks in Wikipedia. Don’t stop there. Wikipedia also says:

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

Inadequate curation and violations of personal privacy

Wikileaks has drawn criticism for violating the personal privacy of a multitude of individuals and inadequately curating its content. These critics include transparency advocates, such as Edward Snowden, the Sunlight Foundation and the Federation of American Scientists.[341]

Wikileaks has published individuals’ Social Security numbers, medical information, and credit card numbers.[342] An analysis by the Associated Press found that Wikileaks had in one of its mass-disclosures published “the personal information of hundreds of people — including sick children, rape victims and mental health patients”.[342] Wikileaks has named teenage rape victims, and outed an individual arrested for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.[342] Some of Wikileaks’ cables “described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees”.[342] An analysis of Wikileaks’ Saudi cables “turned up more than 500 passport, identity, academic or employment files… three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables — including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates that reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner’s infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C.”[342] Two individuals named in the DNC leaks were targeted by identity thieves following Wikileaks’ reveal of their Social Security and credit card information.[342]

Wikileaks’ publishing of Sony’s hacked e-mails drew criticism for violating the privacy of Sony’s employees and for failing to be in the public interest.[343][344] Michael A. Cohen, a fellow at the Century Foundation, argues that “data dumps like these represent a threat to our already shrinking zone of privacy.”[343] He noted that the willingness of Wikileaks to publish information of this type encourages hacking and cybertheft: “With ready and willing amplifiers, what’s to deter the next cyberthief from stealing a company’s database of information and threatening to send it to Wikileaks if a list of demands aren’t met?”[343]

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government, has criticized Wikileaks for inadequate curation of its content. With the DNC leaks, “Wikileaks again failed the due diligence review we expect of putatively journalistic entities when it published the personal information of ordinary citizens, including passport and Social Security numbers contained in the hacked emails of Democratic National Committee staff. We are not alone in raising ethical questions about Wikileaks’ shift from whistleblower to platform for weaponized transparency. Any organization that “doxxes” a public is harming privacy.”[345] The manner in which Wikileaks publishes content can have the effect of censoring political enemies: “Wikileaks’ indiscriminate disclosure in this case is perhaps the closest we’ve seen in reality to the bogeyman projected by enemies to reform — that transparency is just a Trojan Horse for chilling speech and silencing political enemies.”[345]

In July 2016, Edward Snowden criticized Wikileaks for insufficiently curating its content.[346] When Snowden made data public, he did so by working with the Washington Post, the Guardian and other news organizations, chosing only to make documents public which exposed National Security Agency surveillance programs.[346] Content that compromised national security or exposed sensitive personal information was withheld.[346] Wikileaks, on the other hand, makes little effort to remove sensitive personal information or withhold content with adverse national security implications. Wikileaks responded by accusing Snowden of pandering to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.[346]

University of North Carolina Professor Zeynep Tufekci has criticized Wikileaks for exposing sensitive personal information: “WikiLeaks, for example, gleefully tweeted to its millions of followers that a Clinton Foundation employee had attempted suicide… Data dumps by WikiLeaks have outed rape victims and gay people in Saudi Arabia, private citizens’ emails and personal information in Turkey, and the voice mail messages of Democratic National Committee staff members.”[347] She argues these data dumps which violate personal privacy without being in the public interest “threaten our ability to dissent by destroying privacy and unleashing a glut of questionable information that functions, somewhat unexpectedly, as its own form of censorship, rather than as a way to illuminate the maneuverings of the powerful.”[347]

In January 2017, Wikileaks proposed to create a database tracking verified Twitter users which would include sensitive personal information homes, families and finances.[348][349][350] According to the Chicago Tribune, “the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.”[348] Twitter furthermore bans the use of Twitter data for “surveillance purposes,” stating “Posting another person’s private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter rules.”[349]

Just a couple of notes.

Referring to routine mod actions as “censorship” is being antagonistic. The onus is on the poster to make it clear they are not attacking another poster. If nothing else say “this is not directed at posters but at….”

And, BT, pushing someone for answers is not productive. It creates a charged atmosphere and personalizes discussion (though obviously it’s not the same as a personal attack.) On a politics board, it is possible (in theory) either that there’s complete miscommunication that won’t be amended by pushing, or the person chooses not to answer, or they think they did answer. So I guess I am just saying, don’t push people in ways they can or do on other boards. Just a suggestion. The idea is we’re here for the long haul and something dropped today can be picked up again later in other ways, so “demanding an answer” (scare quote not real quote) just isn’t productive, really, and can cause sparks.

Okay, ZN. Understood. Will let it go.

Take care, everyone. Enjoy this icy cold day.