Caution on Twitter urged as Britons barred from US

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312

by ximeng • 14 years ago

105 111 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

joejohnson• 14 years ago

Did the guy who said he was going to "destroy America" have a public twitter feed? I'm wondering if making your tweets protected is enough to keep the FBI from reading them.

bilbo0s2• 14 years ago

Uhh...

I think you are underestimating the reach of the FBI and DHS.

They know EXACTLY whose IP address is posting every comment, they just never go through them unless your spouse's body turns up somewhere. Then they go through everything.

What is surprising to me is that they went through the e-communications of these two simply because they were traveling to the US. That's new info to me...I didn't think they did that.

nollidge• 14 years ago

I'm not sure you understand the question. It's not a matter of IP addresses. Protected tweets are not publicly accessible, so it's not a given that intelligence agencies have access to them unless Twitter is providing it to them, or they've hacked into them.

technoslut4• 14 years ago

From what I've seen of the original post on HN, news organizations had his tweet, which means it was probably publicly available.

>I'm wondering if making your tweets protected is enough to keep the FBI from reading them.

It does alarm me that DM's are available when you search through their public profiles.

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

Where are their DMs available?

smokeyj2• 14 years ago

Does this mean, for every person traveling, the feds can identify your social network activity and detect thought-crime? I'm interested in how they already knew which accounts belonged to who -- and how they automatically detected them as 'threats'.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

if you say "destroy america" in your tweet, it's probably going to get flagged. Odds are good the guy has his real name on his profile somewhere or a way of finding it. I know I do.

OriginalSyn• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)

Carnivore, now DSC1000, scrapes the web and inspects packets for keywords and flags potential threats. I'm pretty sure "destroy" and "America" would raise a flag in it's system.

Furthermore, finding out who accounts on twitter belong to is often fairly trivial since a good deal of people use their actual names and if not that use pseudonyms that are easily linked.

smokeyj2• 14 years ago

Because their name is linked on Twitter? What's to stop someone from making an account under my name?

mrleinad• 14 years ago

US, guardians of free speech around the world, indeed..

"You're free to say what we tell you to say.."

Karunamon5• 14 years ago

As much of a farce as DHS is, I'm pretty sure they have all the authority in the world to regulate who gets into the country and who doesn't.

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

From other news reports it appears that this pair came to the attention of the border folks in the US because of a tip off.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/31/call-to-l...

"Based on information provided by the LAX Port Authority Infoline – a suspicious activity tipline – CBP conducted a secondary interview of two subjects presenting for entry into the United States"

So, the question comes down to... was this a random US citizen who likes to monitor Twitter for threats who decided to make the tip off, or is there something else going on here that we are not seeing? In all the news reports that I've seen I've only seen the first page of the document given to the guy; the page that mentions Twitter. I wonder if there's something else on the other pages.

rdtsc3• 14 years ago

A tip off could have come from anywhere, that is why it is such a good PR explanation for them:

* A random concerned citizen (so it wasn't them looking, they just acted on behalf of someone genuinely concerned, this makes the thing a bit more noble).

* A scorned lover/an enemy ("oh you think are going to go on a vacation? remember what you did to me, I know exactly how to get back... what is that FBI tip-off number again...?")

* A secret (or not so secret govt.) web searching and filtering program. They don't want to reveal which one it is, but it could potentially just be made to generate "tip-offs" so that it looks like a person noticed, but in fact everything is automated. High profile tip-offs can be filtered through human agents as well.

Some of us who lived repressive regimes know how this works. If the govt. is afraid of X, and sets up an anonymous tip-off line to report X. Then is known to go ahead and blindly act on that tip. It creates an awesome/terrifying tool for everyone to use. X can be anything you like: terrorism, communism, whatever the du jour "War on ..." is waged.

In the Soviet Union we had neighbors denouncing each other for anti-communist activities because they couldn't agree on the color of the fence. This stuff will happen. The crazier and irrational the govt. gets the more potential for abuse it creates. With a bit of work and ingenuity, during certain decades, you could have made your whole neighbor's family disappear into Siberia practically overnight.

kruhft6• 14 years ago

> * A secret (or not so secret govt.) web searching and filtering program.

Does nobody remember Carnivore? Imagine what has been developed since then.

ldayley2• 14 years ago

I think that this comment nails it.

In the end, it doesn't matter whether it was a tip-off or it was picked up by some Government threat-monitoring software. The greater end result is the same: a chilling effect on speech. If you aren't careful about how you consider this event, your response is "I'd better be careful what I say."

Edit: I highly recommend Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers", it is a masterful work about the social costs of security.

c0mpute3• 14 years ago

Yes, its a nice veil they can hide behind.

But what boggles my mind the most is, why did FBI have to deport them? Are they really so irrational that they could not discern genuine threats vs someone who jokingly meant it (and in this case its a brit slang!). This is where I think administration is falling apart. You read those stories about TSA horror stories and all of them indicate a lack of common sense on the administrative side.

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

In the Soviet Union we had neighbors denouncing each other for anti-communist activities because they couldn't agree on the color of the fence.

That made me laugh. In the USA, we had people denouncing each other as communists for exactly the same frivolous reasons with dire repercussions. There's an entire era of American history dubbed the McCarthy era, where thousands of Americans were (falsely) accused of harboring communist sentiments.

This is not the first time I have drawn parallels (and there are many to be made) between McCarthyism and the current Islamophobia in the ongoing "war on terror." I feel both will be remembered with similar disgust a hundred years from now.

kruhft6• 14 years ago

Maybe it's time to go back to IRC?

stroboskop2• 14 years ago

If you've gone down the wrong way, a step back can be a step forward.

kruhft6• 14 years ago

I consider IRC a step forward over twitter. Real conversations, choice of clients, multiple distributed servers, fast. And if you use emacs it's just a M-x irc away (at least to connect to freenode).

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

Better: let's revive the finger protocol.

kruhft6• 14 years ago

Actually, that's not too bad of an idea. I remember years back with John Carmac's plan file being read by quite a few users. Much easier than keeping up a web page, plus no artificial limits. No conversation though.

bickfordb• 14 years ago

Most terrorists I know keep a .plan

rmc• 14 years ago

IRC would not be immune to problems like this.

kruhft6• 14 years ago

No, but at least there isn't one central popular company that is on the constant monitor list. IRC allows for multiple disparate networks which are more difficult to take down (one goes down, another just pops up).

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

If they were a credible terrorist threat, they would have been picked up in the UK before even setting off.

burgerbrain4• 14 years ago

And they certainly should not have been put back onto an airplane.

Isn't the job of these people to keep terrorists off of airplanes? Then they "catch" some and the first thing they do is put them on one...

Whoever made that call should be arrested. When they admit that the two did not actually pose a threat, they should be released then promptly re-arrested.

joering2• 14 years ago

> And they certainly should not have been put back onto an airplane.

why not? human brain or any other body part cannot explode on its own. I am sure they were deep/strip-checked, including cavities and rear pipe. After all, there is only a limited number of places you can hide a bomb.

furyg32• 14 years ago

You're confused.

It's the job of the TSA (or security guards at foreign airports) to search and clear you and your possessions for flying. They are preventing short-term threats, this is the last line of defense.

This story is about US Customs and Border Patrol, who are responsible for a lot of things at airports as well as border crossings, including:

1) Making sure you are permitted to enter the country (checking or issuing visas).

2) Making sure you are not bringing anything illegal into the country.

3) Making sure you are not a "threat" to the US. You're a criminal, or associated with activist/terroris organizations which are hostile to the US, or are likely to commit a crime during your stay.

Customs wasn't worried that this guy was going to blow up the next plane he got on. They were (stupidly) worried that he would (probably) cause trouble after he entered based on something somebody (might have) told them. So they played it safe and denied him entry.

The evidence they used was dumb, but at the border there is something between "we have evidence that you're a criminal and we're arresting you" and "you seem like trouble so we're not letting you be our guest".

amalag• 14 years ago

Our tax dollars are being well spent, so now we can catch the next Al Qaeda bomber as he is preparing to destroy America and inadvertently tweets his intention. The jokes on you Al-Qaeda bomber, the US is way ahead of you man. Sounds like a prewritten Colbert segment.

kevinh• 14 years ago

You say that, but multiple people with intent to commit a school shooting/bombing have been caught because they revealed their intentions online.

Monitoring doesn't have to be done to catch the stereotypical "terrorist", but can also catch people with psychological issues that are disgruntled.

Now, is it worth it and does it work? I don't know, but there is precedent for people to post their intentions online.

shareme• 14 years ago

CAUTION, DHS does not understand Queens English, Farsi, basically anything other than DHS speak..so oh why not have DHS stop scanning twitter..

Isofarro• 14 years ago

"The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language." George Bernard Shaw (apparently).

The original tweet(s) were immature as well as culturally insensitive. If you are going to use language that's cliquey in a public broadcast medium, and words that in their plain well-understood meaning convey threats or danger, then you have no grounds to complain if persons of authority take measures against such perceived threats.

Granted, these people probably didn't realise the repercussions of their locale-specific slang, but ignorance is no excuse. They should at least be aware of the environment they are travelling to.

It's the golden rule of international travel: Don't be an idiot. International travel is a privilege, not a right. Foreign countries don't have to let you in, even if you are British.

Being British myself, I'm actually unaccustomed to the use of the word destroy in that context, and never heard this digging up Marylin Monroe quip. I found both tweets tasteless and needlessly incendiary.

randomaccount12• 14 years ago

Can I just point out that according to the article he's Irish and therefore not a Briton. An Irish passport might be slightly higher on the 'be careful' list?

desireco42• 14 years ago

This shows you that security agencies don't have command of english language (they simply don't understand it). I can't understand this otherwise.

wyck• 14 years ago

I think this shows you security agencies are just plain stupid, maybe it's a bureaucratic problem but time and again common sense is thrown out the window with "homeland" security.

estevez• 14 years ago

Let me play devil's advocate here and note that twitter has been used as a communication platform by what the US Gov't consider (again, I take no position on the merits) terrorist organizations,[1] and that monitoring such a public forum is at least somewhat legitimate.

The offending party probably shouldn't have been deported, but that's another matter.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/al-shabaab-twitter_...

phillmv• 14 years ago

Sure.

It's still absurd to deny them entry. Rude white kids from England aren't exactly a threat, and a cursory glance at their background would probably confirm that.

mikeash4• 14 years ago

Monitoring a public forum is absolutely legitimate. I've seen people grumble about the potential monitoring of twitter, but not really on basic principles of censorship, but rather just because it's going to be impractical, wasteful, etc.

What has most people upset is not the monitoring itself, but the use of the monitoring for such stupid things. If you set up a monitoring system that does nothing but hassle and punish a million false positives, that's no good.

shadowfiend• 14 years ago

Caution on Twitter. The ultimate goal of censoring is exactly this: self-censoring. At some point, the government barely needs to censor at all, because the people censor themselves. In this fight, at least, the TSA/DHS/etc is succeeding in spades.

user24• 14 years ago

Indeed, this quote scared me:

> Abta, which represents travel companies in the UK, said holidaymakers need to learn to be ultra-cautious when it comes to talking about forthcoming trips

no, we shouldn't 'need to learn to be ultra-cautious', we should be able to say whatever we want without living in fear.

edit: yes, whatever we want. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. It's actions that we need to stop, not speech.

wyclif2• 14 years ago

By all means, say whatever you want. Just don't expect to be allowed into the USA as a right.

The irrationality and absurdity of TSA is something that most Americans are aware of. But we have a President and Congress who think it's all just fine. The only solution to this problem is to elect lawmakers who will abolish TSA. Last time I checked, there's only one candidate for President who has included that as part of his platform.

Zarathust• 14 years ago

What if they were american citizens? Shouldn't the FBI or something arrest them under terrorist charges?

They came from the UK and were sent back, but if they were from the US, would they be imprisoned?

roc• 14 years ago

Or more to the point: how many checks exist (if any) between such a 'tip' identifying someone as a possible threat, and their being identified as a 'terrorist' by the executive branch and essentially stripped of their rights as a citizen?

This is why people don't trust the administration's argument of: "we'll only use it on real terrorists, we promise". Not only is that still a terrible affront to liberty, but our country's track record of identifying "real" terrorists has been laughable. The very concept of any practical "trust" in their ability to operate in this space is made laughable by situations like the deportations in question.

gerggerg• 14 years ago

Some takeaways.

    The US government absolutely does monitor twitter.
    Not having your real name on-line still matters greatly.
    The US is willing to waste gobs of money just to make you feel bad.

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

"There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."

-- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, 2001-09-26

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacke...

jballanc2• 14 years ago

How many more incidents of this variety before foreigners (and foreign investment and foreign inventors and foreign entrepreneurs) stop coming to the US? After reading this and listening to the latest episode of "This American Life" (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/456/r...), I can't help but wonder if the right in the US will "reap what they sow" and end up with an impoverished shell of an empire that no one wants to illegally enter.

Edit: Based on the down votes this comment is receiving, I assume some people disagree. I'd be curious if the source of that disagreement is a feeling that this incident will not have any impact on the likelihood of other foreigners visiting?

tokenadult• 14 years ago

There are a lot of comments here about the importance of free speech. I value free speech very highly, so I will practice some here. I will see if an attempt to write a possibly disagreeing opinion here will be responded to by thoughtful comments, as I expect, and urge HN participants to consider some other points of view besides those expressed by the majority here.

As I noted in my last comment on this incident, in another HN thread,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529500

"a foreign national kidding around about a trip in which he or she will 'destroy America' shouldn't be surprised to be questioned about that by law enforcement officers." It is routine national policy in every country of the world to give border officers full discretion to deny entry to any foreign person, even if the foreign person has a visa issued by the host country's overseas diplomatic officials, and even if the foreign person comes from a country with a visa-free entry treaty with the host country (as the United Kingdom has with the United States). A general policy of visa-free entry or routine issuance of visas to visitors who meet defined criteria does not remove an immigration officer's general discretion to deny entry to any foreign visitor, without further legal recourse.

I encourage Hacker News participants to check the law of the country where they live, whatever country that is. Very likely you will find that immigration officials have exactly this kind of discretion, unreviewable discretion, in your country. A foreign visitor who kids around about engaging in any kind of illegal or bothersome activity, even the kind of activity that many loyal citizens of the host country engage in, is at risk of being denied entry in pretty much every country in the world. The way to test how often this kind of rare edge case occurs in other countries is to try the experiment--tweet about the fun you desire to have in the next country you plan to visit, in the same terms, and see what happens. Probably most British visitors to the United States who previously have tweeted similar messages have been allowed entry to the United States, without anyone taking notice of the tweets. And probably on some future occasion someone else may tweet the same kinds of statements, and not be detected. But try it yourself if you wonder what other countries might do. In general, each country of the world gives its immigration officers unreviewable discretion to deny entry to foreign persons for any reason or no reason at all.

On the broader issue of whether or not this lone incident is a sign that the United States no longer cherishes freedom of speech, no of course not. Here we all are talking about this incident, with many criticisms of the United States being openly expressed. I daily exercise my right as an American to criticize government officials at all levels in the United States. I will keep right on doing that no matter what I hear about practices by immigration officers at United States borders.

Moreover, the United States continues to enjoy substantial net immigration and a large number of asylum claims by people from other countries who expect to enjoy more freedom once they start living in the United States than they did in the countries of their birth. Here in the United States, I can disagree with you, and you can disagree with me, and we can be civil about that, and not be afraid of secret police or private militia hit squads coming after us if we express a controversial opinion. Other countries also provide the benefit of free speech, and people who are concerned about recent trends in United States law are correct to be wary about granting the government intrusive authority to monitor the private conversations of people in the United States. But the reported incident, while perhaps an excessive response based on the facts reported so far, does not suggest that the United States has lost free speech, nor indeed does it even suggest that the border response to such a tweet is a response that would not be found at other national borders.

The continued interest here on HN in founder's visas and in other efforts to loosen immigration requirements is evidence that there are still plenty of people around the world of high levels of education who would be happy to settle in the United States and pursue their careers there. There are still people who advocate that all of the tens of thousands of university students from dozens of countries who attend undergraduate or graduate classes in the United States should gain residence visas when they gain their degrees. There is plenty of demand to reside in the United States, to visit the United States for tourism or for business, and to invest in the United States. That is not going away any time soon.

Believing in free speech, I welcome your kind comments to this comment, and will read them with care to see if I can improve my thinking on this issue.

waqf2• 14 years ago

Firstly, just because the border officers have final say on denying entry doesn't mean that they don't get policy guidance from their superiors. Since we can't see what that policy guide says, we have to choose between forbearing to criticize at all, and criticizing based on the results we observe.

Secondly, I would argue that both (i) a "reasonable" country (as defined in my imagination) and (ii) many actual countries simply would not search for that tweet, cross-correlate it with an arriving passenger and use it as a reason to question them extra on arrival.

My only real evidence for (ii) is that only the US has passenger manifests of arriving airliners sent to them in advance so that they can be checked against watch lists. (Other countries do this if/when they make you apply for a visa, but the US does it dynamically when you get on the plane even if they don't require you to have a visa.)

dredmorbius3• 14 years ago

Note that in regard to the US, many foreign visitors do not need a visa if they enter through the visa waiver program (90 days duration, tourist classification only, no extension).

jballanc2• 14 years ago

My only comment/question would be regarding your last comment. How can you be so sure that the desire for people to immigrate to the US "is not going away any time soon"?

Furthermore, how can you be sure that the mix of people desiring to immigrate will continue to be favorable to the economic growth of the US? I think I could take your points about the founder's visa and encouraging university students to stay and spin them as a negative indicator. Are these efforts to correct an inherent imbalance in immigration policy, or a reaction to the growing trend for foreign entrepreneurs and students to return to their home countries to set up shop?

Unskilled laborers will naturally migrate to where the jobs are, and the economic excesses of the US will ensure that demand for unskilled labor remains for many decades to come. The engine of the economy, however, is driven by entrepreneurship and inventiveness. I think that the sorts of people who bring these skills to the US are more likely to be sensitive to overbearing regulations and overeager policing.

viraptor2• 14 years ago

I'm just an anecdotal data point here, but I was likely going to travel to the US from work sometime this year. That's not going to happen anymore. Because of various political moves, extradition requests, etc. which happened lately, I no longer feel comfortable visiting US. That also triggered some talks with my friends, from which they learned a couple of uncomfortable facts... This will have next to no real effect of course, but I'd be surprised if I was the only one rejecting to travel there for similar reasons.

worren2• 14 years ago

I am sensitive, having insensitively used the term "The Republic" to refer to Ireland when speaking to a British customs agent, to your argument regarding sovereignty and the necessary discretion of government officials. I simply didn't know the implications. Similarly, a stated intent, not a joke, to engage in an activity that, while indiscreet and boorish in some circles, is not reviled as in our Puritanical society should not serve to permanently discredit a visitor to the US. It is a pernicious scale to employ. And it isn't just visitors to the US who need to find concern in this story. Am I to expect that all of my public statements from now on, guided by whatever level of maturity, sobriety, or proclivity, are to be recorded, permanently and used to determine which airspaces I may traverse? Should my intended audience include every customs official I may ever encounter? Puritanical, indeed. Jesus and the border patrol are watching! You trumpet our political freedoms, casting aspersions on the domestic political establishment. Talk trash about the Her Majesty and then go to England. Speak about religion or sexuality without offending anybody, and expect to travel the other way around the globe to reach your destination. A panopticon such as this equates every iota of common speech with taunting an official.

The argument that we're still a popular place to visit rings hollow. Greece is a popular place to visit, but that shouldn't server as an endorsement of their horribly broken bureaucracy.

scoot3• 14 years ago

Say what?! It is the UK Ireland Act (1949) that recognises "Republic of Ireland" as a name for the Irish state. Under Irish Law, "Republic of Ireland" is only a description, and the official name (in English) is Ireland. The only insensitivity (and ignorance) in this instance is that of the the UK border agent.

I cannot disagree with your main argument however.

liber82• 14 years ago

That other countries practice similar, or worse, exclusionary methods is irrelevant. That people within America still have the right to freely express themselves is, I think, a less interesting takeaway from this snafu.

More interesting is that this sort of behavior is emblematic of major government failure: a failure of policy, of implementation, and of accountability.

From a policy standpoint, we've had roughly 24 terrorists or 3 trips attempt to cause harm to US aircraft in the last decade. In that time, we've hand hundreds of millions of air travelers or millions of trips. And yet, our policy is to treat every single traveler as a potential terrorist.

We've implemented these policies poorly as well. We've spent billions of dollars on what amounts to security theater. We've deputized some of the least capable members of our society, giving them the power to screw with customers more or less without reprisal. We've made travel, which many people viewed with joy a short time ago, a massive pain in the ass. But apart from that, we've also given untold agencies untold power to surveil, apparently, the entire world.

Eventually, and this didn't take long, those in charge of the theater begin to believe they were on the righteous path. As long as your behavior can be cloaked in "security" or "doing what's best for the country", you've essentially got a free pass. And so, 80 year old women get pulled out of line to have their colostomy bags inspected. Senators must be randomly patted down. We get decisions like this.

And, that “security” cloak never gets lifted. When bad decisions are made, as I would argue was made here, we don't hear "Ya, we overreacted. Sorry." Instead, they double down. They cry Security! and spew politicized bullshit, the kind that would make Orwell cringe:

"it tried to maintain a balance between 'securing our borders while facilitating the high volume of legitimate trade and travel that crosses our borders every day.'"

The trouble is, many Americans seem to have no problem with this. Such a minor hassle is worth it, even if it increases safety an imperceptible amount. The problem, in the short term isn’t devastating either. We get a few less Mr. Van Bryan’s visiting each year. But in the long term, all societies whose citizens cede too much power to those who claim to be acting to protect those citizens fail. Usually in the most unpleasant ways.

pnathan• 14 years ago

> a foreign national kidding around about a trip in which he or she will 'destroy America' shouldn't be surprised to be questioned about that by law enforcement officers.

I don't see why saying something that has a threatening meaning shouldn't attract interest by law enforcement officials.

Take the other fork of possibility: If Foreign National (FN) had joked about it, been ignored, then blew something up, there would be an unbelievable outcry. It would - in my honest opinion - have been a terrible lapse in judgment by the officer not to have followed up on such a joke, and the office would not have fared well in the ensuing hue and cry.

liber82• 14 years ago

Which is exactly, of course, why we get such overreaction. Like referees, those in charge of security are only noticed when they do a poor job. Except, unlike referees, there is absolutely no penalty for false positives. They will always err on the side of safety, no matter how remote the probability of harm, because they can never punished for the unseen.

Even when they get it wrong, even when what they initially thought might be a threat turned out to be no threat at all, there is no incentive to admit fault. So this aggressive attitude amplifies, until at some point, it deafens.

bandushrew• 14 years ago

Quite honestly the thing I find most deeply offensive about this move is the gratuitous stupidity of it.

Who believes terrorists would post their intentions on twitter? and even if they did, all they need to do to avoid this ridiculous farce is swap out a word: psst 'engage in revelry' = 'destroy'

There is no trade off between security and freedom taking place here, there is just a parody acting out that not only fails to make anybody any safer, it causes all reasonable people to blanch in shame.

emu• 14 years ago

Perhaps we need a humor flag on web pages, Twitter. By setting the humor bit you could remove all ambiguity as to whether you're making a joke or a threat.

[this.humor := true]

gizzlon2• 14 years ago

I wonder if an emoticon would have saved them..

mkramlich• 14 years ago

Reinforces what should be a lesson for everyone: the flipside of freedom and free speech is responsibility, judgment and facing the consequences. Just because you can do a thing does not mean you should. Win a battle but lose a war. You have the ability and right to yell fire when alone in a room at home. But do it in public theatre and there may be consequences both physical (stampede) and legal.

epo• 14 years ago

The salient point here is that the offending tweet was apparently made some weeks ago. This public act was done deliberately to send a warning signal that Big Brother is everywhere and sees everything. It might have caused some unpleasantness if they had made an example of Americans so they chose a foreign national.

But then again it is just security theatre. They've made people aware they monitor Twitter and (EDIT I would guess) can mine it for historic comments so people will now take more care when using Twitter thus diminishing the value of the monitoring. This was a PR stunt for a purpose we may never understand.

justinhj• 14 years ago

Does anyone know how they went from a tweet to real names and travel dates? And how do they stop some third party abusing twitter to prevent someone else from travelling to the us?

gizzlon2• 14 years ago

This might be a case of what Schneier calls "cover your ass" security: No-one want's to be held responsible if something happens.[1]

If you are an organization, or even just a random guard, the real priority might not to stop something bad from happening. It could just as well be to avoid blame. So it's much better to be extremely cautious.

You're in a world of hurt if someone tipped you off to a "suspicious" tweet, you let them through, and (beyond belief) they actually carried out an attack. Much better to deny them entry, even if it's obvious the "threat" is false.

Since everyone has to be at least as careful as the next guy, probably even more so, I I see this ending badly.

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...

georgieporgie• 14 years ago

I really hope US anti-terrorist work isn't so ethnocentric as to focus on "destroy" and "America". Next they'll be searching on, "hate our freedom".

ilkandi3• 14 years ago

Can I offer some thoughts that seem to go against the majority opinion so far?

1) Should authorities take reasonable steps to prevent the commission of a crime, or wait until after it's occurred? What if a well-known soccer hooligan has posted that he's looking forward to running amuck? 2) Are threats against an individual allowed as part of free speech? What about against a family? Small business? A neighbourhood? A country? Where do you draw the line? 3) Do you differentiate between personal criminal behaviour and organized criminal behaviour? Or, between explosive threats vs non-explosive threats, like a small bomb vs significant vandalism to public property done for Youtube? 4) How would a third party know the tweeter is joking? (Most people who get called out for saying rude or racist remarks say "oh I was just kidding" afterwards). Do you prefer that all remarks should be ignored completely, or (somehow) checked for credibility? (And I have no idea how one would approach that, btw)

Looking for direct answers to all 4 questions, please. Would like to sample where people stand.

viraptor2• 14 years ago

Yes. No. Yes. Due to lack of real proof. If we reacted this way to every aggressive speech, we'd have majority of population in prison for saying they're going to kill someone. (as in - "What did he do? I'm going to kill him!")

maeon3• 14 years ago

Let one little patriot act pass through Congress and we get plagued with the retard bregade known as the tsa for 100 years.

ilkandi3• 14 years ago

Did DHS specifically say they were banned for their tweets or is it just a newsworthy assumption? Did the two have any kind of criminal history? Were they denied This could be like the guy who reportedly entered the US because he showed an iPad photo of his passport. Made news for a few days until US customs said "uh, no, we have our own methods and discretion, the ipad pic didn't matter". Big story became a non-story.

ilkandi3• 14 years ago

Did DHS specifically say they were banned for their tweets or is it just a newsworthy assumption? Did the two have any kind of criminal history, or was the denial due to their responses?

This could be like the guy who reportedly entered the US because he showed an iPad photo of his passport. Made news for a few days until US customs said "uh, no, we have our own methods and discretion, the ipad pic didn't matter". Big story became a non-story.

Caution on Twitter urged as Britons barred from US

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