CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

US Government challenged on Twitter records access – CNN.com

From Larry Lazo, CNN
February 16, 2011 — Updated 0251 GMT (1051 HKT)

* ACLU, Electric Frontier Foundation have filed motions in federal court
* One motion seeks to unseal court records on attempts to collect info on Twitter users
* A second motion seeks to overturn order requiring Twitter to provide user info to feds
* Civil rights groups represent three people who are focus of government investigation

Washington (CNN) — Two civil liberties groups have squared off against the government as investigators probing the WikiLeaks scandal seek to gain access to Twitter records.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Tuesday representing three people government investigators are targeting.

Two motions have been filed in the case. The first aims to unseal court records on attempts by the government to collect private records from people holding accounts with Twitter, and the second seeks to overturn a previous court order that requires Twitter to provide information about its users to the government. Defense lawyers say the government’s demand for the records violates First Amendment speech rights and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament, is the most high-profile of the three defendants. The other two people represented in court were WikiLeaks associates Jacob Applebaum and Rop Gonggijp. The three defendants are believed to have helped prepare a classified U.S. Army video that was published on the WikiLeaks website last year.

Defense attorneys argued that the government has not sufficiently demonstrated the need for secrecy when it comes to keeping court documents sealed. They also question the justification for the government wanting IP addresses pertaining to their clients’ use on Twitter.

The government said looking at IP addresses is no different than subpoenas of phone records. The ‘defendants are tying together privacy in the home with public movements,’ said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis. ‘IP addresses do not show location with precision,’ he added.

The government says its investigation is not about politics or defendants’ associations with certain invidividuals. The government did not disclose why it is seeking information on the people in question in addition to the others in the still-sealed court documents. But they did say a person’s use of Twitter is fair game and their wanting to know about it is justified.

‘Tweets are public statements,’ Davis said.

U.S. Magistrate Theresa C. Buchanan appeared to be persuaded by the government’s argument on privacy concerns, telling defense attorneys, ‘There is no expectation of privacy when using Twitter.’ Having said that, Buchanan said she would take both arguments under consideration.

The WikiLeaks website is behind the largest-ever intelligence leak in American history. Hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents have been posted on the site. Everything from details about classified military operations to commentary about various foreign heads of state has been posted on WikiLeaks.org.

Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private suspected of being involved in the scandal, is being held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. He is facing eight counts of violating U.S. Criminal Code for allegedly leaking a secret military video from the Iraq war that was posted on the WikiLeaks website.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in London and is fighting extradition to Sweden to face sex charges brought against him by two women.

Feds subpoena Twitter for info on WikiLeaks backer: “

Icelandic MP sounds alarm

US authorities have subpoenaed Twitter for information about an Icelandic parliamentarian who until recently was a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks and its embattled founder Julian Assange.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

State Department Official Warns Students Against Discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook, Twitter

A State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger their employment prospects.

The official, a former student of the school, called the career services office of his alma mater to advise students not to post links to WikiLeaks (Wikileaks) documents, nor to make comments on social networks such as Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook), as ‘engaging in these activities would call into question [a student's] ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,’ he was quoted as saying in an e-mail sent to students by the career services office on Tuesday.

The warning coincided with WikiLeaks’s release of thousands of secret U.S. embassy cables on Sunday, November 28. The site has since been plagued by multiple DDoS attacks, and termination of service notifications from its DNS provider, EveryDNS.net, its temporary website host, Amazon (Amazon.com), and PayPal, which handled many of the donations the organization received.

Student Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog on Thursday, the same day Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers proposed legislation that would hold those who publish the names of any U.S. intelligence sources ‘criminally accountable.’ A full copy of the e-mail, which the career services office has since confirmed sending, is pasted below:

From: ‘Office of Career Services’

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,


Office of Career Services

According to an e-mail sent by spokesperson Phillip J. Crowley to The Huffington Post, the warning does not, however, represent a formal policy position. ‘We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified. We condemn what Mr. Assange is doing, but have given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge,’ he wrote.

Employees in the State Department are among the many government workers who were told by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget not to view the leaked documents without the required security clearance on Friday.

Although you may not be going for a job at the State Department any time soon, does the warning nevertheless make you wary of discussing WikiLeaks on public forums such as Facebook and Twitter?

Twitter joke trial: Paul Chambers loses appeal against conviction | UK news | The Guardian

Conviction for threatening to blow up airport in ‘foolish prank’ on Twitter will stand, court rules

* Martin Wainwright
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 November 2010 16.20 GMT

The man convicted of ‘menace’ for threatening to blow up an airport in a Twitter joke has lost his appeal.

Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old accountant whose online courtship with another user of the microblogging site led to the ‘foolish prank’, had hoped that a crown court would dismiss his conviction and £1,000 fine without a full hearing.

But Judge Jacqueline Davies instead handed down a devastating finding at Doncaster which dismissed Chambers’s appeal on every count. After reading out his comment from the site – ‘Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!’ – she found that it contained menace and Chambers must have known that it might be taken seriously.

He was also saddled with a legal bill three times higher than his original £384 with £600 costs, as the court ordered him to pay a further £2,000 legal bill for the latest proceedings.

Chambers, who lost his financial manager’s job after his arrest in January, sent the message to a contact called @crazycolours, a young woman from Northern Ireland who was among 650 people who regularly followed his 140-character tweets.

They had arranged to meet in Belfast and Chambers told an earlier hearing he was desperate and frustrated that heavy snow might close Robin Hood, near Doncaster, and ruin their plans.

He used Twitter’s private service to joke with her late at night about hijacking a plane, noting wryly that its pilots might expect to be diverted to somewhere more exotic than Northern Ireland. But his facetious bomb threat was sent on the network’s public system, allowing anyone to see it – including staff at Robin Hood.

Chambers’s conviction this summer caused huge controversy both on Twitter itself and among civil liberties lawyers because of its implications for the cyberworld’s freewheeling style. The Crown Prosecution Service caused controversy by using a law aimed against nuisance calls – originally to protect ‘female telephonists at the Post Office’ in the 1930s – rather than specific bomb hoax legislation, which requires stronger evidence of intent.

Judge Davies refused a request by Ferguson to cut the sentence to an absolute or conditional discharge. She effectively branded Chambers a liar by calling his denials about realising the possible implications of the tweet incredible.

She told the court that he had been an ‘unimpressive witness’ and said: ‘Anyone in this country in the present climate of terrorist threats, especially at airports, could not be unaware of the possible consequences.’

She also described some of his earlier evidence as ’self-serving’ and cast doubt on his claims not to have kept up to date with current affairs through newspapers or TV. As for the tweet at the centre of the case, she called it ‘menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed.’

Chambers and @crazycolours, who now live together in Northern Ireland, left court disconsolately and will now meet their legal team to consider a further appeal. The cost will be weighed against clearing Chambers’s name and the wider issues, which have caused an international debate on social networking sites.

Chambers said he was also aggrieved at the heavy-handed handling of his case, saying that he had been held for seven hours in a police cell. He said: ‘I wouldn’t have minded if they had told me off for being stupid, which was clearly how they saw things really, but it wasn’t like that.’

The wider implications were fanned by news of a second arrest under the same ‘nuisance call’ law of a Conservative councillor in Birmingham who posted a tweet crudely attacking the columnist Yasmin Alibhi-Brown. The post by Gareth Compton, now removed, reportedly said: ‘Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.’

Compton, who represents Erdington on Birmingham city council, apologised after his release on bail and said: ‘It was an ill-conceived attempt at humour. I apologise for any offence caused. It was wholly unintentional.’

The tweet was criticised in the House of Commons by the Leader of the House, Sir George Young, who was asked to allow an emergency debate by Steve McCable, Labour MP for Selly Oak in Birmingham.

Young said: ‘Stoning to death is a barbarous form of punishment which the government, and I am sure every member of this House, deplores. I hope that no elected person will threaten any member of our society with that form of punishment.’

Twitter joke martyr loses appeal: “

Chambers still stuffed by off-cuff non-threat

Updated Paul Chambers, the Twitter joker turned misdemeanour conviction martyr, has lost his appeal against conviction for posting a tongue-in-cheek message ‘threatening’ to blow Doncaster airport ’sky high’.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Councillor’s tweet leads to arrest as airport joker loses appeal: “A Conservative councillor has been arrested over a Twitter post that called for the stoning of a journalist, while another Twitter user has lost his appeal over a conviction for a message that said he would blow up an airport.“

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Twitter accused of censoring Israeli flotilla attack tweets – Hashtags down | TechEye: “Twitter accused of censoring Israeli flotilla attack tweets”

The recent Israeli attack on a flotilla of aid-worker ships in Gaza prompted a huge response on Twitter, but many users are now accusing the social media website of censoring material relating to the event.

Users began using the hashtag #flotilla with their reports and comments about the Gaza incident, which allows others to sort and search through results based on the topic, similar to other forms of web tagging. However, it was reported that at around 11am GMT the popular hashtag stopped working, resulting in numerous Twitter errors.

This could have simply been a case of Twitter not being able to handle the sheer volume of people using the hashtag, or it could have been an anti-spam system that kicked in automatically based on the number of uses within a short time frame. A large number of people do not accept either of these possibilities, however, and have accused Twitter of censorship.

Many of these users are now using a new hashtag, #freedomflotilla, which has remained in operation despite it trending in the same way the #flotilla one did earlier today. We tested the hashtags and found that #flotilla was periodically not working, but the others worked fine.

New reports have revealed that even the #gaza and #israel hashtags went down for a period of time, but both are now working again. It may be a case that they are only going down at peak periods of usage when the servers cannot handle the load. It may also be that the problem is not the hashtags themselves, but rather the search engine which is trying to handle the large volumes.

This may be a simple case of overload, but many Twitter users are asking the question if Twitter is as impartial as it should be in situations like the one that has arisen today.

Did Twitter censor the #flotilla hashtag following the Israel attack? | Technology | guardian.co.uk:

Users of the microblogging service complain at apparent censorship as discussion grows around deaths on convoy – but it isn’t justified”

Mucky private chat could be illegal soon: “

Risky encounters of the IRC and Twitter kind

Could 2010 be the year when the authorities finally clamp down on the internet – and in the process abolish some fundamental liberties we have been taking for granted for a very long time? The answer from two cases – one now over, though possibly subject to appeal, the other going forward to a full hearing later this year – could be a very worrying affirmative.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Only in the UK…..

Twitter responds as ‘joke’ bomber prepares to stand trial | Metro.co.uk: “Twitter responds as ‘joke’ bomber prepares to stand trial

10 May 2010

As Twitter user Paul Chambers prepares to stand trial over a ‘joke’ bomb threat on the micro-blogging site, others have been looking to raise awareness of the case using the #twitterjoketrial hashtag. “

26-year-old Chambers will go on trial today after allegedly posting a Tweet that threatened to blow an airport ’sky high’.

Chambers, of Balby, Doncaster, denied tweeting the message about Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster on January 6.

The post was picked up by routine investigations into the site, which lead to Chambers’ eventual arrest.

The alleged tweet read: ‘Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!’

Twitter users have mounted a campaign to raise awareness of the trial, with #twitterjoketrial appearing high in the UK trending topics.

Messages of support have flooded in from fellow users, ranging from: ‘A misconceived prosecution against a Twitterer is now occurring: Please help trend #twitterjoketrial’ (@jackofkent) to ‘What angers me, almost as much as my friend’s life being flipped on it’s head, is the money the CPS have wasted on this. #twitterjoketrial’ (@tdotwells).

Chambers has pleaded not guilty to a charge of sending a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

If convicted, Chambers could be the first person in the UK to face jail for comments posted on the micro-blogging site.