11 ms·

Caution on Twitter urged as Britons barred from US

105 points by ximeng 15y ago

joejohnson 15y 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.
- bilbo0s 15y 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 15y 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.
    - sp332 15y ago
      Twitter's privacy policy doesn't actually require a warrant to give up your "private" info (including your protected tweets). Law and Harm: We may preserve or disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety of any person; to address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect Twitter's rights or property. https://twitter.com/privacy https://twitter.com/privacy
      - w1ntermute 15y ago
        Yes, but that's a moot point unless one of the following is true: 1) Twitter monitors all tweets itself for any "subversive" content, and then takes the initiative to report that to the appropriate authorities. 2) Twitter gives full access to all tweets to the FBI, regardless of their content, so that the FBI can sift through the data themselves. 1 isn't such a big deal, but 2 certainly is.
        sp332 15y ago
        I doubt Twitter gives them everything since it's a difficult engineering problem to handle that much data. But I could easily believe the FBI has a list of terms or phrases that Twitter self-monitors for.
    - bilbo0s 15y ago
      Yes it is a given...it's right in Twitter's privacy policy that they will release your private information to the authorities when asked. Oh..sp332 beat me to it.
- technoslut 15y 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.
  - jgrahamc 15y ago
    Where are their DMs available?
    - technoslut 15y ago
      When I go through their publicly available profile and look at their tweets, I can see tweets that did not appear in my timeline as public replies usually do. I can only assume these are DM's. EDIT: Am I somehow mistaken? I've seen them not only on well-known people but on friends as well when I asked them about this.
      - rfergie 15y ago
        I don't think these are direct messages. If you follow me and I @-reply someone who you do not follow then that tweet will appear in my public timeline but it will not appear in your home view.
        technoslut 15y ago
        I've followed both and have seen them in their individual profiles which is why I always chose to use SMS for things that weren't meant to be public. Any public @reply or retweet I should see and have seen. If these are DM's I shouldn't see any part of the conversation.
        socksy 15y ago
        You're confused. These aren't DM's, they're public replies. Direct messages are sent using a "d [username]" instead of the "@[username]" syntax.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
emu 15y 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]
- gizzlon 15y ago
  I wonder if an emoticon would have saved them..
emu 15y 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]
mkramlich 15y 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 15y 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.
smokeyj 15y 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 15y 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 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) 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.
  - smokeyj 15y ago
    Because their name is linked on Twitter? What's to stop someone from making an account under my name?
    - tripzilch 15y ago
      > What's to stop someone from making an account under my name? Absolutely nothing! But, if you got nothing to fear, you got nothing to hide ... er, ... or something to that effect.
mrleinad 15y ago
US, guardians of free speech around the world, indeed.. "You're free to say what we tell you to say.."
- Karunamon 15y 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.
jgrahamc 15y 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-lax-tipline-flagged-u-k-tourists-tweets/ 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.
- rdtsc 15y 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.
  - kruhft 15y ago
kruhft 15y ago
Maybe it's time to go back to IRC?
- stroboskop 15y ago
  If you've gone down the wrong way, a step back can be a step forward.
  - kruhft 15y 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).
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      Twitter has real conversations, a metric ton of clients, and is fast. Not sure what you're talking about here. As for emacs, install http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TwitteringMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TwitteringMode and M-x twit
      - wiredfool 15y ago
        And for extra fun, hook up M-x spook to M-x twit.
        Karunamon 15y ago
        Ooh. I can see it now. A series of scripts which generates bogus accounts on twitter for the exclusive use of the spook command - the purpose of which is to overwhelm Echelon/Carnivore/$oppresive_monitoring_systems with false positives, thereby making any such surveillance prohibitively expensive and useless.
      - kruhft 15y ago
        True, but I think IRC will be around in another 10-20 years, twitter, not so sure. I can setup my own IRC server in an hour, can that be done with twitter? As you might have guessed I use IRC and have 'tweeted' about 10 times in my life not really getting this twitter thing, mostly because the simpler, older alternatives are just that much better. Of course, IMNSHO.
mike-cardwell 15y ago
If they were a credible terrorist threat, they would have been picked up in the UK before even setting off.
- burgerbrain 15y 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 15y 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.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Surely that is not the official position, since it doesn't matter how thoroughly somebody on the "do not fly" list lets themselves be searched.
  - furyg3 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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_n_1172442.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/al-shabaab-twitter_...
- phillmv 15y 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.
- mikeash 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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.
  - wyclif 15y 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.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - Vivtek 15y ago
      No, voting in different lawmakers is not the sole recourse of citizens of a democratic country. Raising awareness so that your existing lawmakers notice the issue sufficiently to get back the ass coverage stage is far more effective than electing somebody who's saying the right words and will then turn around with a "So long, suckers!" as soon as he's got your vote. Not that that has happened recently, of course.
    - zem 15y ago
Zarathust 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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/attacked/transcripts/fleischertext_092601.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacke...
jballanc 15y 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/reap-what-you-sow?act=1 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 15y 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 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.
justinhj 15y 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?
gizzlon 15y 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.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...
georgieporgie 15y 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".
ilkandi 15y 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.
- viraptor 15y 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 15y ago
Let one little patriot act pass through Congress and we get plagued with the retard bregade known as the tsa for 100 years.
ilkandi 15y 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.
ilkandi 15y 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.

105 points by ximeng 15y 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.

bilbo0s 15y 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 15y 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.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Twitter's privacy policy doesn't actually require a warrant to give up your "private" info (including your protected tweets). Law and Harm: We may preserve or disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety of any person; to address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect Twitter's rights or property. https://twitter.com/privacy https://twitter.com/privacy
    - w1ntermute 15y ago
      Yes, but that's a moot point unless one of the following is true: 1) Twitter monitors all tweets itself for any "subversive" content, and then takes the initiative to report that to the appropriate authorities. 2) Twitter gives full access to all tweets to the FBI, regardless of their content, so that the FBI can sift through the data themselves. 1 isn't such a big deal, but 2 certainly is.
      - sp332 15y ago
        I doubt Twitter gives them everything since it's a difficult engineering problem to handle that much data. But I could easily believe the FBI has a list of terms or phrases that Twitter self-monitors for.
  - bilbo0s 15y ago
    Yes it is a given...it's right in Twitter's privacy policy that they will release your private information to the authorities when asked. Oh..sp332 beat me to it.
technoslut 15y 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.
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  Where are their DMs available?
  - technoslut 15y ago
    When I go through their publicly available profile and look at their tweets, I can see tweets that did not appear in my timeline as public replies usually do. I can only assume these are DM's. EDIT: Am I somehow mistaken? I've seen them not only on well-known people but on friends as well when I asked them about this.
    - rfergie 15y ago
      I don't think these are direct messages. If you follow me and I @-reply someone who you do not follow then that tweet will appear in my public timeline but it will not appear in your home view.
      - technoslut 15y ago
        I've followed both and have seen them in their individual profiles which is why I always chose to use SMS for things that weren't meant to be public. Any public @reply or retweet I should see and have seen. If these are DM's I shouldn't see any part of the conversation.
        socksy 15y ago
        You're confused. These aren't DM's, they're public replies. Direct messages are sent using a "d [username]" instead of the "@[username]" syntax.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

emu 15y 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]

gizzlon 15y ago
I wonder if an emoticon would have saved them..

emu 15y 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]

mkramlich 15y 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 15y 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.

smokeyj 15y 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 15y 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 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) 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.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  Because their name is linked on Twitter? What's to stop someone from making an account under my name?
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    > What's to stop someone from making an account under my name? Absolutely nothing! But, if you got nothing to fear, you got nothing to hide ... er, ... or something to that effect.

mrleinad 15y ago

US, guardians of free speech around the world, indeed.. "You're free to say what we tell you to say.."

Karunamon 15y 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.

jgrahamc 15y 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-lax-tipline-flagged-u-k-tourists-tweets/ 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.

rdtsc 15y 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.
- kruhft 15y ago

kruhft 15y ago

Maybe it's time to go back to IRC?

stroboskop 15y ago
If you've gone down the wrong way, a step back can be a step forward.
- kruhft 15y 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).
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    Twitter has real conversations, a metric ton of clients, and is fast. Not sure what you're talking about here. As for emacs, install http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TwitteringMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TwitteringMode and M-x twit
    - wiredfool 15y ago
      And for extra fun, hook up M-x spook to M-x twit.
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        Ooh. I can see it now. A series of scripts which generates bogus accounts on twitter for the exclusive use of the spook command - the purpose of which is to overwhelm Echelon/Carnivore/$oppresive_monitoring_systems with false positives, thereby making any such surveillance prohibitively expensive and useless.
    - kruhft 15y ago
      True, but I think IRC will be around in another 10-20 years, twitter, not so sure. I can setup my own IRC server in an hour, can that be done with twitter? As you might have guessed I use IRC and have 'tweeted' about 10 times in my life not really getting this twitter thing, mostly because the simpler, older alternatives are just that much better. Of course, IMNSHO.

mike-cardwell 15y ago

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

burgerbrain 15y 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 15y 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.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Surely that is not the official position, since it doesn't matter how thoroughly somebody on the "do not fly" list lets themselves be searched.
- furyg3 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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_n_1172442.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/al-shabaab-twitter_...

phillmv 15y 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.
mikeash 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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.
- wyclif 15y 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.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    No, voting in different lawmakers is not the sole recourse of citizens of a democratic country. Raising awareness so that your existing lawmakers notice the issue sufficiently to get back the ass coverage stage is far more effective than electing somebody who's saying the right words and will then turn around with a "So long, suckers!" as soon as he's got your vote. Not that that has happened recently, of course.
  - zem 15y ago

Zarathust 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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/attacked/transcripts/fleischertext_092601.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacke...

jballanc 15y 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/reap-what-you-sow?act=1 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 15y 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 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.

justinhj 15y 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?

gizzlon 15y 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.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...

georgieporgie 15y 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".

ilkandi 15y 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.

viraptor 15y 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 15y ago

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

ilkandi 15y 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.

ilkandi 15y 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.