3 ms·

Don't you find it strange that I'd rely on twitter?

by oneloop 10y ago

dredmorbius 10y ago
If you want to send a message (or confirmation) to someone, and don't want to create a track of who it's to, a public posting board is useful. So: Twitter. Any of @Snowden's 2.29 million followers -- or anyone else reading the tweet without following his profile, could be the intended recipient. I first ran across the concept in Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. The protagonist is in a bar with another character looking at messages being posted. A name and phone number could well be a coded signal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy (Heinlein almost certainly took the concept from elsewhere, CotG is based on Kipling's Kim, also about tradecraft. Just reflecting my first association.)
- oneloop 10y ago
  A) people don't know for sure whether Snowden has access to his twitter account. They're relying on twitter to keep everything in order. B) twitter will know which of Snowdens 2.29 million followers who could have read the tweet, actually read the tweet. Depending on how fast he deleted it and the level of activity of his followers, I'm guessing this number will be in the thousands. Actually, if this was a concerned of Snowden, then it wouldn't make sense to delete it, which makes me think this wasn't a concern for him.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Both reasonable responses, but not necessarily valid. A is addressed by the nature of a hash. The person who needs to know, will know. Those who don't, can't be sure. If the source of the hash was communicated by other means (out of band), then the hash itself might be serving to confirm that Snowden himself does influence what's sent over that Twitter account. B is possible, yes, though again, the tweet and hash itself can be replicated across multiple systems, and were. You'd have to look not only at Twitter access, but at all recipients of that message across all possibly channels. Though the likelihood of one of Snowden's followers who accessed the tweet while it was up being the intended target is probably fairly high.

Don't you find it strange that I'd rely on twitter?

by oneloop 10y ago

Don't you find it strange that I'd rely on twitter?

If you want to send a message (or confirmation) to someone, and don't want to create a track of who it's to, a public posting board is useful. So: Twitter. Any of @Snowden's 2.29 million followers -- or anyone else reading the tweet without following his profile, could be the intended recipient. I first ran across the concept in Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. The protagonist is in a bar with another character looking at messages being posted. A name and phone number could well be a coded signal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy (Heinlein almost certainly took the concept from elsewhere, CotG is based on Kipling's Kim, also about tradecraft. Just reflecting my first association.)

oneloop 10y ago
A) people don't know for sure whether Snowden has access to his twitter account. They're relying on twitter to keep everything in order. B) twitter will know which of Snowdens 2.29 million followers who could have read the tweet, actually read the tweet. Depending on how fast he deleted it and the level of activity of his followers, I'm guessing this number will be in the thousands. Actually, if this was a concerned of Snowden, then it wouldn't make sense to delete it, which makes me think this wasn't a concern for him.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Both reasonable responses, but not necessarily valid. A is addressed by the nature of a hash. The person who needs to know, will know. Those who don't, can't be sure. If the source of the hash was communicated by other means (out of band), then the hash itself might be serving to confirm that Snowden himself does influence what's sent over that Twitter account. B is possible, yes, though again, the tweet and hash itself can be replicated across multiple systems, and were. You'd have to look not only at Twitter access, but at all recipients of that message across all possibly channels. Though the likelihood of one of Snowden's followers who accessed the tweet while it was up being the intended target is probably fairly high.