5 ms·

Twitter terror arrest: cause for concern

40 points by bensummers 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
This whole case seriously pisses me off, the 'world we live in' is the one we make.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  Precisely - knowing nothing about the details of this case, but I'm willing to bet that it wasn't some automated system that flagged him, but rather he was ratted out by a "concerned" (read: paranoid) citizen.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    It's funny, some of the worst things that we used to scold the eastblock for are now part and parcel of everyday life. And nobody lifts a finger. edit: if anything it is the 'concerned citizen' and the buffoon cops that need a talking to.
  - dagobart 17y ago
    maybe just a person who accidentally saw the tweet in question, but did know nothing about the person who wrote it. Did they bother to ask any ofthe other followers about the seriousness of the tweet? Or even the originator? That sounds like the usual 'I take the chance to get my 15 mins of importance'. Bad thing is, worried internet-foreign authorities make it so easy to denounce people.
FiReaNG3L 17y ago
On the other hand, everybody would be pointing fingers at police if, indeed, he blew the airport sky high.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- conover 17y ago
  I wonder at what point you can give the police a pass for missing something? What is the threshold of reasonable? Based on this article, I guess we are at a point now where there is no threshld. Everything is a serious security threat. Rather scary. Edit: This also reminds me of the "You can't say bomb on an airplane." scene in the movie Meet the Parents.
  - dagobart 17y ago
    maybe someone should redo the Monthy Python "Spam" sketch with the term "bomb", in flight, to get everyone back down to earth
colinplamondon 17y ago
He made a threat. I think it's in bad taste to make public bombing threats, even as a joke. It's just not respectful to the people who have to dig through this shit and interdict the real bad guys. As societies, we have limited resources with which to investigate threats that are made, and our governments have an obligation to investigate each and every threat that's made, even jokingly on Twitter. The reaction is totally over the top, granted, and I'd rather they spend their time interrogating trust fund Nigerians recently returned from a Yemenese vacation, but there should be a penalty for making joking bombing threats, in the same way that you shouldn't go around yelling 'fire!' in a movie theater. Criminal prosecution is ludicrous, though.
- pmorici 17y ago
  "our governments have an obligation to investigate each and every threat that's made, even jokingly on Twitter." No they don't. They have an obligation to investigate legitimate things.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  He never made a threat, he made a joke. One that you may think in poor taste but I thought it was well within the acceptable. Blow up an airport because they don't have their planes landing on time ? Sounds very realistic to me. We've had a guy executed because of these overzealous clowns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes I think to investigate is fine, to arrest is way across the line. If these guys can't tell the difference between a legitimate threat and a bloody joke then we have other problems than terrorism. I'm mad enough about this to write about it in a way that I possibly shouldn't but I am seriously past caring: http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+you%2e http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+y... Let's see who is brave enough to turn me in.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    Something doesn't feel right in all of this case. Like we are missing something. I suspect there was some otherp particular reason the police were worried he may take extreme action secondary to the tweet; it would explain things more clearly. There us also a double standard with some of the people outraged over this. Hundreds of people are reported eah month as veiwing kiddy porn. The majority are innocent but you will struggle to find too many people who will disagree With them beig investigated. If a concerend indvidual, perhaps someone who knows he guy, as worried by what he read and reported it what do the police do? They just have to have a look; I mean ok they went much too far (assuming the story is accurate and this guy wasn't, for example, difficult or refused to cooperate etc.) as I said, I can't help feeling there is a touch more to this than a busy body stalking Twitter :-) I'm ac
rms 17y ago
Compare to Eliott Madison's arrest for tweeting information about the police movements during the illegal police assault during the Pittsburgh G20 summit. His obviously unconstitutional charges were withdrawn. Conclusion: Twitter is good for protesting in Iran, bad for protesting in the USA. http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/united-states-v-madison http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/united-states-v-madison
- pyre 17y ago
  Reading that link, it looks like only the PA charges were dropped, and the NYPD is still building a case against him.
  - rms 17y ago
    :( You're right, I celebrated too early when I heard the PA charges were dropped. Also, thank you Hacker News for ignoring my baiting statements about the police. It'll take 5-7 years for the courts to rule one way or another about the legality of the police action.
kevingadd 17y ago
Seems like if a terrorist really wants to cause chaos, all he has to do is issue bomb threats from people's twitter accounts - by stealing the password via an XSS hole, or via a phishing attack, or by accessing the account via malware. Depressing. Anyone who denies the value of anonymity in our modern society should consider the cost of having your identity associated with easily falsified forms of communication, like Twitter.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
mquander 17y ago
So, you know, what the hell do we do? Every day there's a news story like this: "Man/woman/child does totally innocuous thing X; is expelled from school/arrested and jailed/has house raided and burgled by police/beaten/shot." Every single story, it could have been me. I make offensive jokes, do funny-looking stuff with technology, and hang out with other people like myself. I have an interest in not getting fucked over for no reason. What do we do? I don't have any idea what to do. As far as I know, no politicians are offering to change this situation. Is there some way to fix this system?
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  OTOH we occasionally read the story: Terrorist posted comments on Twitter feed before smuggling bomb onto plane. In a way, it's our fault (us being the public). When we demand childishly that our security systems be comprehensive and infallible enough to catch every single would-be attacker, we inevitably end up catching a bunch of false positives in the net as well.
  - mquander 17y ago
    I have to say, I am quite skeptical of that "we." There's a small media feeding frenzy every time there's any kind of "security" hubbub, but how many normal people actually support these measures after reading accounts of them? How many would support them if the media climate were more levelheaded? Precious few, I suspect. (Based purely on my anecdata talking to friends and family, it's 0%, but I'm sure there's a minority of folks around who really do support such things.) Look at the recent "underwear bomber" escapade. There, we had much more credible circumstantial evidence pointing at the suspect in advance (e.g. the dad's phone call about him.) That is a hundred times more damning than this Twitter post -- although still not terribly damning, if you ask me -- and yet, he flew. Was there some great popular outrage that we didn't catch him in advance of his flight? Not as far as I can tell; mostly, there was a great CNN and op-ed outrage.
    - garethm 17y ago
      I'd guess the way the Paul Chambers incident was dealt with was as harsh as it is because the underwear bomber story happened about three weeks before his tweet. No one in the chain of people he dealt with wanted to be in the position the person who said don't worry about the underwear bomber is in.
diN0bot 17y ago
kids have been suspended from schools for decades for jokes like this, especially after columbine. meh.
- dagobart 17y ago
  people (authorities) should learn to realize what kidding is
fghiklhnb 17y ago
Similar thing happened a few years ago - somebody texted the lyrics of a Clash song to another band member. It contained the words gun and airliner - which resulted in special branch kicking the doors in. But the police deny there is a monitoring system. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jun/03/terrorism.world http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jun/03/terrorism.world (MI5/NSA - I think you are all jolly nice people who should get raises)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- pmorici 17y ago
  You're kidding right? In the article it says the guy sent the message to the wrong number and the recipient called the police.
motters 17y ago
This highlights the dilemma of social networking online. You tend to think that you're just chatting with your small circle of friends, using in-jokes and so on, whereas the audience may in fact be much bigger and be unable to judge isolated comments in their intended context.
pasbesoin 17y ago
I'd like to ask what the public cost has been (and which continues to accumulate) for this line of pursuit. Both in outright expense, and in allocation of limited resources (thereby removing them from performing other work, pursuing other leads, etc). Of course, the personal cost to the Twitterer has been extreme and will likely continue to accrue at a rate difficult to match against the resources the State can (wastefully) afford to invest -- afford at least for the moment, until its stupidity overwhelms even it. (The caveat being that in democracies, the State and those resources are (purportedly) ours. Just blaming "the State" ignores our own culpability. If you don't like it, vote them out. If you don't know for whom to vote, inform yourself. If you don't like any of the choices, run,)

40 points by bensummers 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

This whole case seriously pisses me off, the 'world we live in' is the one we make.

potatolicious 17y ago
Precisely - knowing nothing about the details of this case, but I'm willing to bet that it wasn't some automated system that flagged him, but rather he was ratted out by a "concerned" (read: paranoid) citizen.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  It's funny, some of the worst things that we used to scold the eastblock for are now part and parcel of everyday life. And nobody lifts a finger. edit: if anything it is the 'concerned citizen' and the buffoon cops that need a talking to.
- dagobart 17y ago
  maybe just a person who accidentally saw the tweet in question, but did know nothing about the person who wrote it. Did they bother to ask any ofthe other followers about the seriousness of the tweet? Or even the originator? That sounds like the usual 'I take the chance to get my 15 mins of importance'. Bad thing is, worried internet-foreign authorities make it so easy to denounce people.

FiReaNG3L 17y ago

On the other hand, everybody would be pointing fingers at police if, indeed, he blew the airport sky high.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
conover 17y ago
I wonder at what point you can give the police a pass for missing something? What is the threshold of reasonable? Based on this article, I guess we are at a point now where there is no threshld. Everything is a serious security threat. Rather scary. Edit: This also reminds me of the "You can't say bomb on an airplane." scene in the movie Meet the Parents.
- dagobart 17y ago
  maybe someone should redo the Monthy Python "Spam" sketch with the term "bomb", in flight, to get everyone back down to earth

colinplamondon 17y ago

He made a threat. I think it's in bad taste to make public bombing threats, even as a joke. It's just not respectful to the people who have to dig through this shit and interdict the real bad guys. As societies, we have limited resources with which to investigate threats that are made, and our governments have an obligation to investigate each and every threat that's made, even jokingly on Twitter. The reaction is totally over the top, granted, and I'd rather they spend their time interrogating trust fund Nigerians recently returned from a Yemenese vacation, but there should be a penalty for making joking bombing threats, in the same way that you shouldn't go around yelling 'fire!' in a movie theater. Criminal prosecution is ludicrous, though.

pmorici 17y ago
"our governments have an obligation to investigate each and every threat that's made, even jokingly on Twitter." No they don't. They have an obligation to investigate legitimate things.
jacquesm 17y ago
He never made a threat, he made a joke. One that you may think in poor taste but I thought it was well within the acceptable. Blow up an airport because they don't have their planes landing on time ? Sounds very realistic to me. We've had a guy executed because of these overzealous clowns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes I think to investigate is fine, to arrest is way across the line. If these guys can't tell the difference between a legitimate threat and a bloody joke then we have other problems than terrorism. I'm mad enough about this to write about it in a way that I possibly shouldn't but I am seriously past caring: http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+you%2e http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+y... Let's see who is brave enough to turn me in.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  Something doesn't feel right in all of this case. Like we are missing something. I suspect there was some otherp particular reason the police were worried he may take extreme action secondary to the tweet; it would explain things more clearly. There us also a double standard with some of the people outraged over this. Hundreds of people are reported eah month as veiwing kiddy porn. The majority are innocent but you will struggle to find too many people who will disagree With them beig investigated. If a concerend indvidual, perhaps someone who knows he guy, as worried by what he read and reported it what do the police do? They just have to have a look; I mean ok they went much too far (assuming the story is accurate and this guy wasn't, for example, difficult or refused to cooperate etc.) as I said, I can't help feeling there is a touch more to this than a busy body stalking Twitter :-) I'm ac

rms 17y ago

Compare to Eliott Madison's arrest for tweeting information about the police movements during the illegal police assault during the Pittsburgh G20 summit. His obviously unconstitutional charges were withdrawn. Conclusion: Twitter is good for protesting in Iran, bad for protesting in the USA. http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/united-states-v-madison http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/united-states-v-madison

pyre 17y ago
Reading that link, it looks like only the PA charges were dropped, and the NYPD is still building a case against him.
- rms 17y ago
  :( You're right, I celebrated too early when I heard the PA charges were dropped. Also, thank you Hacker News for ignoring my baiting statements about the police. It'll take 5-7 years for the courts to rule one way or another about the legality of the police action.

kevingadd 17y ago

Seems like if a terrorist really wants to cause chaos, all he has to do is issue bomb threats from people's twitter accounts - by stealing the password via an XSS hole, or via a phishing attack, or by accessing the account via malware. Depressing. Anyone who denies the value of anonymity in our modern society should consider the cost of having your identity associated with easily falsified forms of communication, like Twitter.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

mquander 17y ago

So, you know, what the hell do we do? Every day there's a news story like this: "Man/woman/child does totally innocuous thing X; is expelled from school/arrested and jailed/has house raided and burgled by police/beaten/shot." Every single story, it could have been me. I make offensive jokes, do funny-looking stuff with technology, and hang out with other people like myself. I have an interest in not getting fucked over for no reason. What do we do? I don't have any idea what to do. As far as I know, no politicians are offering to change this situation. Is there some way to fix this system?

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
OTOH we occasionally read the story: Terrorist posted comments on Twitter feed before smuggling bomb onto plane. In a way, it's our fault (us being the public). When we demand childishly that our security systems be comprehensive and infallible enough to catch every single would-be attacker, we inevitably end up catching a bunch of false positives in the net as well.
- mquander 17y ago
  I have to say, I am quite skeptical of that "we." There's a small media feeding frenzy every time there's any kind of "security" hubbub, but how many normal people actually support these measures after reading accounts of them? How many would support them if the media climate were more levelheaded? Precious few, I suspect. (Based purely on my anecdata talking to friends and family, it's 0%, but I'm sure there's a minority of folks around who really do support such things.) Look at the recent "underwear bomber" escapade. There, we had much more credible circumstantial evidence pointing at the suspect in advance (e.g. the dad's phone call about him.) That is a hundred times more damning than this Twitter post -- although still not terribly damning, if you ask me -- and yet, he flew. Was there some great popular outrage that we didn't catch him in advance of his flight? Not as far as I can tell; mostly, there was a great CNN and op-ed outrage.
  - garethm 17y ago
    I'd guess the way the Paul Chambers incident was dealt with was as harsh as it is because the underwear bomber story happened about three weeks before his tweet. No one in the chain of people he dealt with wanted to be in the position the person who said don't worry about the underwear bomber is in.

diN0bot 17y ago

kids have been suspended from schools for decades for jokes like this, especially after columbine. meh.

dagobart 17y ago
people (authorities) should learn to realize what kidding is

fghiklhnb 17y ago

Similar thing happened a few years ago - somebody texted the lyrics of a Clash song to another band member. It contained the words gun and airliner - which resulted in special branch kicking the doors in. But the police deny there is a monitoring system. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jun/03/terrorism.world http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jun/03/terrorism.world (MI5/NSA - I think you are all jolly nice people who should get raises)

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
pmorici 17y ago
You're kidding right? In the article it says the guy sent the message to the wrong number and the recipient called the police.

motters 17y ago

This highlights the dilemma of social networking online. You tend to think that you're just chatting with your small circle of friends, using in-jokes and so on, whereas the audience may in fact be much bigger and be unable to judge isolated comments in their intended context.

pasbesoin 17y ago

I'd like to ask what the public cost has been (and which continues to accumulate) for this line of pursuit. Both in outright expense, and in allocation of limited resources (thereby removing them from performing other work, pursuing other leads, etc). Of course, the personal cost to the Twitterer has been extreme and will likely continue to accrue at a rate difficult to match against the resources the State can (wastefully) afford to invest -- afford at least for the moment, until its stupidity overwhelms even it. (The caveat being that in democracies, the State and those resources are (purportedly) ours. Just blaming "the State" ignores our own culpability. If you don't like it, vote them out. If you don't know for whom to vote, inform yourself. If you don't like any of the choices, run,)