
UK government irate at Twitter’s surveillance API crackdown - pearlsteinj
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/uk-government-irate-at-twitters-surveillance-api-crackdown/
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Fifer82
It is just such utter bullshit. "fight on terrorism". This is why I just don't
do political news. No one reports on "huh fight on terrorism you say, can we
shine some light on this claim? How useful has Twitter been to home
security...". Why isn't that the story?

I keep seeing stories build on just bullshit. The BBC will say "And what about
housing Mrs May" and she will say "My government has created a white
paper...... and councils are pissed about planning permission....."

There is no answer. Over and over and over again. There is no point in the BBC
reporter existing, no point in anyone's time being wasted. Just report
nothing.

Giving Governments access to public data has totally changed the dynamics of
politics and the public is losing everything as a result.

Government just fabricates an internal memo leak, waits 12 hours to get some
data back on public opinion and then depending on that, will deny it, or will
go ahead.

Time and time again you see this. Our old Chancellor had no experience with
finance, and during his term, it was found that he had dodged tax.... the day
after he had given a statement that he was serious about tax evasion. Then,
something about an old Veteran having cake was the main story that day across
the whole media board. Forgotten.

David Cameron said one evening after a COBRA meeting "Lets send dogs, and
fences to Calais to stop the swarm of immigrants" \- That got bad data
results, so by 6am the next morning he adapted it to "We will take 10000 and
send aid". By 9am, it was all forgotten.

What is happening?? Where is reality?? Is no one responsible for anything any
more?? Is this a result of the fragmentation of media outlets?? Like, I grew
up with 4 channels. Now I don't want TV. Therefor there is no cross reference
at all. You can say what you want and like 10% of the populace will hear it.
That means government has never had it so easy.

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7952
An interesting approach is to just make government decisions algorithmic. Have
people do a questionnaire during elections, and then optimise policy to
maximise benefit to everyone. Try and make the optimisation process as open
and explicit as possible.

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Sevores
But I don't know anything about economics, law, healthcare, biology,
international relations, geopolitics, mathematics, history, agriculture,
environmental protection, or much of anything for that matter so why should I
decide?

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ionised
George Osborne knew nothing about economics and yet found himself Chancellor.

Most of our politicians know precisely fuck all about the cabinet offices they
inhabit.

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Fifer82
I like when Gove, the guy who in 2015's Flagship Policy was to increase the
"times table". After he was laughed out of office, he was moved into "Law and
Justice". So now he is peddling similar completely irrelevant bullshit over on
that side of the fence.

Meanwhile, Hunt, the culture secretary for the Olympics did such a great job
that he is now the Health Secretary.

I would rather get a 1% tax increase, and pay for real people, a real NHS
manager with 50 years, and pay him for his insight than pay these fucking
plebs to poke around in their careers.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Ah yes, I'm sure terrorists are planning things on Twitter in public tweets
and replies.

You know who _actually_ publicly uses Twitter?

Political activists.

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MichaelGG
Sure, but political activists also start riots. Just because they are
activists doesn't mean they aren't doing "bad" things (violence). There's huge
demand from even local LE across the world to turn online postings into some
form of intelligence for them.

I agree that it'll mostly be abused by government, but knowing what people are
planning can be helpful. Right now there are groups of people coordinating a
street battle in Berkeley over social media. Giving local police insight into
the groups is almost certainly a benefit, assuming the police act to keep the
peace.

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GordonS
So the privacy and rights of many should be violated because of the actions of
a tiny minority?

I'd argue that any minute amount of good that comes from this is by far and
away out balanced by the abuse of those with access (and in the UK there is a
tendency for creeping escalation with such powers) and the violation of
privacy of innocent people.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Good thing the UK is not a partner of the US in intelligence sharing which
just has to send a NSL to Twitter and get access to all the data they have. /s

If you use an online service, you should just assume that whatever the company
can access, the country the service is based in and their intelligence
partners can also access.

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oxryly1
This is a bit of puffy PR coup for twitter, right? It can crow about
protecting users' privacy from government surveillance while continuing to
allow (naturally well-intentioned) companies to pay for the very same access.

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sjclemmy
I heard 10 Downing Street referred to as Castle Mayskull today.

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Karunamon
_The spokesman also called for social media companies to play a role in the
government’s fight against terrorism._

Indeed. That role is to tell the government to GFTS until they have a warrant
in hand.

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oxryly1
or purchase an access license like a good corporate citizen

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mpeg
The article is literally about Twitter cutting off access to developers who
sell their data feeds to government for surveillance purposes.

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oxryly1
I know. I'm skeptical that this policy will be enforced consistently. I think
they'll enforce it in a few high profile cases for PR purposes, then the LE
agencies will get a little more clever, and surveillance will continue.

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mdekkers
The UK government believe "1984" was a manual

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helthanatos
Pretty much any government today believes that...

