5 ms·

If a tweet declares war, is it treason to take it down?

64 points by awinter-py 7y ago

akersten 7y ago
Sorry, I'm really not seeing the jump to "treason" here. I also think the author has a personal vendetta against Twitter based on the final sentence of the post, but regardless - they acknowledge that declaration of war is a congressional power, and that contempt of Congress is a possibility - but somehow this means that removal of a post from a member of the executive branch is treason? Would the New York Times refusing to run a story about how war was declared be treason? What about CSPAN cutting away the broadcast in the middle of a war announcement? I don't think so, in either case, and I don't think it's the case for Twitter either - because them not carrying the information doesn't change the material facts of the declaration. They're not interfering in an official congressional process in any capacity, because they're not part of an official congressional process.
- caiocaiocaio 7y ago
  You and me have an extremely different definition of personal vendetta!
  - akersten 7y ago
    That's fair, "vendetta" is too strong of a word. "Personal bias" is better-suited. It's just hard to read a post calling them "internet vampires" and still assume a neutral author.
    - t0mbstone 7y ago
      But Twitter has objectively proven themselves to be "celebrity vampires" by selectively applying different sets of rules to celebrities than to common people. For example, it is against Twitter's official rules (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules) for a user to use their platform to say hateful or racist things, and they regularly ban people for violating those conditions, but they they regularly allow famous people (like the President of the USA) to get away with violating many of those rules. Why does Twitter let Trump (and many other famous people) get away with breaking the rules? Because Twitter directly benefits from the viewers and the outrage. Acknowledging that fact (and yes, it is a provable fact) hardly means someone has a personal vendetta against Twitter.
      - manicdee 7y ago
        It’s especially common for Twitter, upon receiving complaints from a POC about racial harassment, to ban the victim.
- mbillie1 7y ago
  > They're not interfering in an official congressional process in any capacity, because they're not part of an official congressional process. This is the crux of it I'd say.
tptacek 7y ago
No, for assistance to an enemy to be treasonable, war must actually have been declared, and only Congress can declare war. Actually waging war on the US is treasonable without a Congressional declaration, but the definition depends on a state of "open war" in which you're part of a recognized assembled group of people engaged in open armed hostilities. The short answer to almost all these kinds of questions is "it's never treason".
- diego 7y ago
  1) You're assuming this ONLY discusses the possibility of the US declaring war via tweet. The article clearly talks about ANY country that could declare war via tweet. 2) It specifically addresses the question of the US and Congress. https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-tweet-declare-war https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-t...
  - time0ut 7y ago
    Would it be possible for Twitter to commit treason against another country at all?
    - diego 7y ago
      I don't suppose it's a company that commits treason, rather an individual making a decision. If so, it may depend on the nationality of the decider. What if, say, the Twitter community manager for France decided to take down such a tweet by a French official.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Yes, its analysis of the US and Congress is, I believe, simply wrong. The President can effectively levy war in the 21st century without Congress, but such "wars" do not create the conditions required for treason. Treason is incumbent on war being properly declared. Even John Walker Lindh couldn't be charged with treason, and he had the weight of an actual AUMF against him.
    - 7y ago
Torwald 7y ago
> If twitter wanted heads of state off their platform, they would have asked them long ago. They put up with everything because like me and the rest of the internet they’re celebrity vampires. Maybe they don't put up with anything. I couldn't find any official complaint of a Twitter inc. spokesperson about having to "put up" with what any head of state is doing on their platform.
rabuse 7y ago
Obviously not, since the account can be compromised. (Especially when it comes to Twitter and how they handle 2-Factor)
danso 7y ago
In tech communities, we often have discussions/debates about the value and/or necessity of hosting content and data on servers we own, because we fear losing everything stored on cloud servers beyond our control. The current White House seems to be the very opposite in its lack of qualm or reflection. Which is ironic because the WH has long had a decent software stack (made even better by federal budgets and staffing) to publish, host disseminate, and secure content on servers completely under their control – arguably as close to reliability and digital permanence as the Library of Congress or Internet Archive. I know the federal archivists have logistics and software in place to automatically collect and archive digital content [0]. But that doesn't do much for real-time current announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. In the hypothetical event in which the President posts something that could irrevocably lead to diplomatic disaster and war, it's not impossible to imagine a tech executive, or even low-level employee, having a Vasily Arkhipov moment and making the unilateral decision to censor/ban the president. From the perspective of the White House and the President, of course, it's deeply undesirable to have a main communication channel cut off, especially during an emergency. And yet President Trump has stoked a mindset among the public and media to see his Twitter as the direct feed of executive-level news and decision making, without any concern that Twitter's execs have ultimate veto power over his channel. [0] https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/ https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)
penileImplant 7y ago
If a fortune cookie declares war, is it treason to eat it? If a roll of toilet paper declares war, is it treason to wipe your ass with it? If war is declared with a telephone call, is it treason to hang up? If a beeper receives a pager notification to call back a number so that war can be declared, is it treason to ignore the page? If wars might be declared via twitter, huge portions of human civilization are about to go up in smoke. Those using twitter to declare war will probably lose. It's probably treason to use twitter as an escalation channel.
celticmusic 7y ago
what a stupid thing to waste time thinking about. One would think the actual declaration of war would be the interesting event here.
- benj111 7y ago
  Ok. X declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at war?
  - krapp 7y ago
    >X declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at war? Obviously, yes, for two reasons: 1) X isn't going to wait for confirmation that Y sees a tweet before actually going to war and 2) Y isn't going to depend entirely on Twitter to know what X is doing.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > X declares war on Y. [...] > Are they at war? Yes. Moreover, it doesn't matter, as no one declares war before initiating hostilities anymore; since aggression has been uniformly understood to be a crime, the only legitimate reason for waging war is is immediate, including imminent, national or collective self-defense (including, in the latter, implementation of UNSC resolutions pertaining to maintenance of peace and security), which requires claiming that the other side has already initiated war, which makes declarations superfluous. For domestic purposes, in the US, Congress will sometimes issue what is legally, though not formally labelled, a conditional declaration of war conditioned on executive determinations, but those conditions tend to be an executive determination that conditions which include (among more specific findings) a violation of UNSC conditions or acts of aggression against the US.
    - benj111 7y ago
      I was thinking of a World War 2 scenario where the declarers didn't actually start hostilities. Now in an alternate universe where Germany didn't realise it was at war if it invaded Poland, so it never invaded France. Fast forward X years on, and France wants to sign a peace treaty (because it's embarrassing being in the EU but at war with a fellow member, and makes Schengen complicated), but Germany doesn't see the need because they aren't at war. Can France unilaterally declare peace? Is Germany at war? (I suppose theres a legal and real world answer to this) I'm reminded of an urban legend, where Berwick on Tweed wasn't included in the peace treaty concluding the Crimean war, therefore still technically at war with Russia [1]. In all the tellings, a second treaty has had to be signed to end the war, which suggests both parties need to agree. [1] http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-russia/ http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-r...
tomatotomato37 7y ago
The early conversation here seems to focus more on US procedures and government branches than Twitter's responsibilities but Twitter is not just accessible to US world leaders. What would happen if some Middle Eastern monarch used the service to declare war on a neighboring country. I think even the UK still does war declaration from only the Queen, how should Twitter respond to it then?
- catalogia 7y ago
  How could an American company commit treason in a foreign country? Treason in a country you aren't a citizen of, in a country you have no moral, ethical or logical obligation to be loyal to, seems nonsensical. If country A invades country B, country A isn't committing treason against country B. Treason isn't just some word meant to describe "anything a country dislikes".
cft 7y ago
The quarter when Trump abandons Twitter I am going to short it. The reversal of Twitter stock was due to Trump popularizing it.
Kenji 7y ago
Who declares a war these days? That's so out of fashion. You just march in. In self-defense or to protect the world from extremists and nukes, if possible.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jjk166 7y ago
According to the Hague Convention's relevant sections, article 1: The Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war. article 2: The existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph. Neutral Powers, nevertheless, cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly established that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war. There is nothing saying that a declaration of war must be preserved. Indeed the only mentioned method of transmitting a declaration of war is by telegraph, which does not preserve the information at all and would mean the message might be completely missed if the receiver was unmanned at the time. Ignoring the absurdity of declaring war exclusively via twitter, or the improbability that a declaration of war on twitter by a nation state would go unnoticed, it seems even an extremely rapid deletion of the tweet would not hinder the tweeter's ability to formally declare war, and thus the deletion could never be treason to begin with. There might be an issue with the Federal Recordkeeping Act, but this would be on the part of the entity tweeting, not Twitter, and would certainly not be grounds for treason in any capacity.
Quarrel 7y ago
"Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer" They should have stopped the article there. They're way off base on almost every point, with no idea about some of the basics of law at all. The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.

64 points by awinter-py 7y ago

Sorry, I'm really not seeing the jump to "treason" here. I also think the author has a personal vendetta against Twitter based on the final sentence of the post, but regardless - they acknowledge that declaration of war is a congressional power, and that contempt of Congress is a possibility - but somehow this means that removal of a post from a member of the executive branch is treason? Would the New York Times refusing to run a story about how war was declared be treason? What about CSPAN cutting away the broadcast in the middle of a war announcement? I don't think so, in either case, and I don't think it's the case for Twitter either - because them not carrying the information doesn't change the material facts of the declaration. They're not interfering in an official congressional process in any capacity, because they're not part of an official congressional process.

caiocaiocaio 7y ago
You and me have an extremely different definition of personal vendetta!
- akersten 7y ago
  That's fair, "vendetta" is too strong of a word. "Personal bias" is better-suited. It's just hard to read a post calling them "internet vampires" and still assume a neutral author.
  - t0mbstone 7y ago
    But Twitter has objectively proven themselves to be "celebrity vampires" by selectively applying different sets of rules to celebrities than to common people. For example, it is against Twitter's official rules (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules) for a user to use their platform to say hateful or racist things, and they regularly ban people for violating those conditions, but they they regularly allow famous people (like the President of the USA) to get away with violating many of those rules. Why does Twitter let Trump (and many other famous people) get away with breaking the rules? Because Twitter directly benefits from the viewers and the outrage. Acknowledging that fact (and yes, it is a provable fact) hardly means someone has a personal vendetta against Twitter.
    - manicdee 7y ago
      It’s especially common for Twitter, upon receiving complaints from a POC about racial harassment, to ban the victim.
mbillie1 7y ago
> They're not interfering in an official congressional process in any capacity, because they're not part of an official congressional process. This is the crux of it I'd say.

tptacek 7y ago

No, for assistance to an enemy to be treasonable, war must actually have been declared, and only Congress can declare war. Actually waging war on the US is treasonable without a Congressional declaration, but the definition depends on a state of "open war" in which you're part of a recognized assembled group of people engaged in open armed hostilities. The short answer to almost all these kinds of questions is "it's never treason".

diego 7y ago
1) You're assuming this ONLY discusses the possibility of the US declaring war via tweet. The article clearly talks about ANY country that could declare war via tweet. 2) It specifically addresses the question of the US and Congress. https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-tweet-declare-war https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-t...
- time0ut 7y ago
  Would it be possible for Twitter to commit treason against another country at all?
  - diego 7y ago
    I don't suppose it's a company that commits treason, rather an individual making a decision. If so, it may depend on the nationality of the decider. What if, say, the Twitter community manager for France decided to take down such a tweet by a French official.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Yes, its analysis of the US and Congress is, I believe, simply wrong. The President can effectively levy war in the 21st century without Congress, but such "wars" do not create the conditions required for treason. Treason is incumbent on war being properly declared. Even John Walker Lindh couldn't be charged with treason, and he had the weight of an actual AUMF against him.
  - 7y ago

Torwald 7y ago

> If twitter wanted heads of state off their platform, they would have asked them long ago. They put up with everything because like me and the rest of the internet they’re celebrity vampires. Maybe they don't put up with anything. I couldn't find any official complaint of a Twitter inc. spokesperson about having to "put up" with what any head of state is doing on their platform.

rabuse 7y ago

Obviously not, since the account can be compromised. (Especially when it comes to Twitter and how they handle 2-Factor)

danso 7y ago

In tech communities, we often have discussions/debates about the value and/or necessity of hosting content and data on servers we own, because we fear losing everything stored on cloud servers beyond our control. The current White House seems to be the very opposite in its lack of qualm or reflection. Which is ironic because the WH has long had a decent software stack (made even better by federal budgets and staffing) to publish, host disseminate, and secure content on servers completely under their control – arguably as close to reliability and digital permanence as the Library of Congress or Internet Archive. I know the federal archivists have logistics and software in place to automatically collect and archive digital content [0]. But that doesn't do much for real-time current announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. In the hypothetical event in which the President posts something that could irrevocably lead to diplomatic disaster and war, it's not impossible to imagine a tech executive, or even low-level employee, having a Vasily Arkhipov moment and making the unilateral decision to censor/ban the president. From the perspective of the White House and the President, of course, it's deeply undesirable to have a main communication channel cut off, especially during an emergency. And yet President Trump has stoked a mindset among the public and media to see his Twitter as the direct feed of executive-level news and decision making, without any concern that Twitter's execs have ultimate veto power over his channel. [0] https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/ https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)

penileImplant 7y ago

If a fortune cookie declares war, is it treason to eat it? If a roll of toilet paper declares war, is it treason to wipe your ass with it? If war is declared with a telephone call, is it treason to hang up? If a beeper receives a pager notification to call back a number so that war can be declared, is it treason to ignore the page? If wars might be declared via twitter, huge portions of human civilization are about to go up in smoke. Those using twitter to declare war will probably lose. It's probably treason to use twitter as an escalation channel.

celticmusic 7y ago

what a stupid thing to waste time thinking about. One would think the actual declaration of war would be the interesting event here.

benj111 7y ago
Ok. X declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at war?
- krapp 7y ago
  >X declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at war? Obviously, yes, for two reasons: 1) X isn't going to wait for confirmation that Y sees a tweet before actually going to war and 2) Y isn't going to depend entirely on Twitter to know what X is doing.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > X declares war on Y. [...] > Are they at war? Yes. Moreover, it doesn't matter, as no one declares war before initiating hostilities anymore; since aggression has been uniformly understood to be a crime, the only legitimate reason for waging war is is immediate, including imminent, national or collective self-defense (including, in the latter, implementation of UNSC resolutions pertaining to maintenance of peace and security), which requires claiming that the other side has already initiated war, which makes declarations superfluous. For domestic purposes, in the US, Congress will sometimes issue what is legally, though not formally labelled, a conditional declaration of war conditioned on executive determinations, but those conditions tend to be an executive determination that conditions which include (among more specific findings) a violation of UNSC conditions or acts of aggression against the US.
  - benj111 7y ago
    I was thinking of a World War 2 scenario where the declarers didn't actually start hostilities. Now in an alternate universe where Germany didn't realise it was at war if it invaded Poland, so it never invaded France. Fast forward X years on, and France wants to sign a peace treaty (because it's embarrassing being in the EU but at war with a fellow member, and makes Schengen complicated), but Germany doesn't see the need because they aren't at war. Can France unilaterally declare peace? Is Germany at war? (I suppose theres a legal and real world answer to this) I'm reminded of an urban legend, where Berwick on Tweed wasn't included in the peace treaty concluding the Crimean war, therefore still technically at war with Russia [1]. In all the tellings, a second treaty has had to be signed to end the war, which suggests both parties need to agree. [1] http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-russia/ http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-r...

tomatotomato37 7y ago

The early conversation here seems to focus more on US procedures and government branches than Twitter's responsibilities but Twitter is not just accessible to US world leaders. What would happen if some Middle Eastern monarch used the service to declare war on a neighboring country. I think even the UK still does war declaration from only the Queen, how should Twitter respond to it then?

catalogia 7y ago
How could an American company commit treason in a foreign country? Treason in a country you aren't a citizen of, in a country you have no moral, ethical or logical obligation to be loyal to, seems nonsensical. If country A invades country B, country A isn't committing treason against country B. Treason isn't just some word meant to describe "anything a country dislikes".

cft 7y ago

The quarter when Trump abandons Twitter I am going to short it. The reversal of Twitter stock was due to Trump popularizing it.

Kenji 7y ago

Who declares a war these days? That's so out of fashion. You just march in. In self-defense or to protect the world from extremists and nukes, if possible.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jjk166 7y ago

According to the Hague Convention's relevant sections, article 1: The Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war. article 2: The existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph. Neutral Powers, nevertheless, cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly established that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war. There is nothing saying that a declaration of war must be preserved. Indeed the only mentioned method of transmitting a declaration of war is by telegraph, which does not preserve the information at all and would mean the message might be completely missed if the receiver was unmanned at the time. Ignoring the absurdity of declaring war exclusively via twitter, or the improbability that a declaration of war on twitter by a nation state would go unnoticed, it seems even an extremely rapid deletion of the tweet would not hinder the tweeter's ability to formally declare war, and thus the deletion could never be treason to begin with. There might be an issue with the Federal Recordkeeping Act, but this would be on the part of the entity tweeting, not Twitter, and would certainly not be grounds for treason in any capacity.

Quarrel 7y ago

"Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer" They should have stopped the article there. They're way off base on almost every point, with no idea about some of the basics of law at all. The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.