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Twitter's response to US Government search warrant (turned over deleted DMs) [pdf]
- hnburnsy 3y agoMy favorite part is when the government suggests to Twitter that they should Ctl-F to find 'associated accounts'
- roflyear 3y agoClassic, and depressing.
- josefresco 3y agoWhat's funny is while the judge might look silly suggesting such a basic technique, Twitter's lawyers were clearly "playing dumb" saying that a search for "realDonaldTrump" produced "millions of emails" and therefore was unreasonable.
- progbits 3y agoLawyers gonna lawyer, don't expect good intent from them. Edit, more accurately: do not anthropomorphize lawyers.
- justrealist 3y agoWell I think they were saying that (1) internally at Twitter there were millions of references to the realDonaldTrump account in slack/email (plausible) and (2) there were a ton of external communications about the account which were probably not material to this request.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThey're deliberately playing dumb, though, in a way that was probably pretty transparent to the judge. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/15/special-counsel-obtained-trump-twitter-howell-00111410 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/15/special-counsel-obt... That conversation refers to: > Among the data the search warrant commanded Twitter to produce: Accounts associated with @realdonaldtrump that the former president might have used in the same device. They know that doesn't mean "anyone who @mentioned him publicly".
- peppermint_gum 3y agoThis is not true. "Millions of emails" was in reference to this part of the warrant: "Communications between Twitter and any person regarding the account including contacts with support services and records of actions taken"
- ceejayoz 3y agoA public @mention of Trump by a random person is not a "communication between Twitter [and that person] regarding the [@realDonaldTrump] account" by any sane reading. That item means they have to hand over things like support tickets or emails sent to the @realDonaldTrump account or Trump's social media team.
- vineyardmike 3y agoGoogle seems to be able to find associated accounts by seeing if one device is signed in multiple times. Same with Meta. The court specifically asked for other accounts used by trump on the same device. This SHOULD be as simple as control-F. Twitter almost certainly stores some sort of device identifier that can accomplish this.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Twitter almost certainly stores some sort of device identifier that can accomplish this. They definitely do, and use this as part of when they ban a user permanently - all other accounts (i.e. "backup" accounts) that have ever used the device in question get banned as well. Happened way too often in my circles.
- riffic 3y ago'grep' or 'SELECT' would have really made me laugh though.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoHere's the government attorney explaining how Twitter should do it: > To the extent that Twitter does not, it should be a simple process. You have cookies associated with an account; you have the email for the subscriber information; perhaps you have the phone number; you definitely have the IP addresses. Control F that through your system to see what other accounts have come from those IP addresses, are linked to that email address, are linked to the phone number, are linked to the same cookies. I don't profess to be a technological wizard, but it does not seem to be a complex issue. Reminds me of freelancing nightmares where the client would being with: "This should only take a few hours but I need a website with a simple store front and shopping cart...". The best response I came up with to these clients was: if you know exactly how long it will take then you must know exactly the steps involved and how long each takes so you can do the work yourself and you don't need me :P
- spencerflem 3y agoThis one does though, surely these systems are already in place for blocking spam
- JohnMakin 3y agoOf course they have this capability. They would have to.
- mikestew 3y agoSo following your analogy (which I'll state upfront is a poor one), where do you think the government attorney is wrong? Because from where I sit the government attorney, if not completely correct, is at least on the right track. Other companies can piece this together (how else do they know that you are logged in somewhere else?), and I would be shocked if there isn't some means on Twitter's backend to do the same. And from reading the transcript, it would seem that Twitter's objection is about analyzing the data, as opposed to simply providing it.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoI just think it will realistically take Twitter more than two weeks to come up with this data. Seems like a long time but my experience at companies of 1,000+ is that things move very slow.
- morkalork 3y agoEasy-peasy, just open the last 6 years of twitter access logs in Excel and ctrl-F for Donny's ip/device identifier!
- ceejayoz 3y agoDo you really think they don't have some sort of system to index data like device identifiers for quick searching? https://help.twitter.com/en/about-personalization-across-your-devices https://help.twitter.com/en/about-personalization-across-you... > By better understanding how different browsers and devices are related, we can use information from one browser or device to help personalize the Twitter experience on another. For example, if you commonly use Twitter for Android around the same time and from the same network where you browse sports websites with embedded Tweets on a computer, we may infer that your Android device and laptop are related and later suggest sports-related Tweets and serve sports-related advertising on your Android device.
- morkalork 3y agoNo, I just find the thought of a legal aide trying to open a comically huge .csv file in Excel humerous.
- vineyardmike 3y agoIf you make a data-access request in GDPR you might actually get a massive CSV file with this data in it. Obviously some automated system put it together, not control F, but the legal team totally could be using CSV
- shrubble 3y agoThe joke's on the Court -- the lawyers are using Emacs which requires Ctrl-S instead!
- sacrosanct 3y agoNeeds more context. I glossed over the PDF, but couldn't figure out what this is about. ELI5.
- jameskilton 3y agohttps://daringfireball.net/2023/08/holy_hell_trump_did_use_dms https://daringfireball.net/2023/08/holy_hell_trump_did_use_d... I think covers this well.
- itbeho 3y agoThat's an extremely partisan source...
- joezydeco 3y agoThe DOJ asked for access to Trump's twitter account, including DMs, deleted items, and drafts. Twitter stalled on producing this information so this hearing was the DOJ asking the judge to start hitting Twitter with fines until they could produce. There's also some confusion at the start because DOJ asked for other possible accounts that Trump might have used as a sockpuppet/backchannel means of communication and Twitter seems to either not be able to discover that, or can't find it.
- josefresco 3y ago> Twitter seems to either not be able to discover that, or can't find it They clearly CAN, but don't want to. Their (X's lawyers) objections in the transcript are ridiculous (they claimed they don't have an "affiliated account" category - like really?!?) and when pressed for timeframes suddenly they can produce "impossible" data in less than 24h.
- joezydeco 3y agoWas Twitter really as sophisticated as Facebook in this regard? If @realdonaldtrump and @johnbarron are both tweeting from the same IP in the same time frame, could Twitter make the connection that both are the same user? Was there enough backtracking stored in their systems to know that?
- dboreham 3y agoTrump didn't have the legendary opsec he's supposed to have.
- ceejayoz 3y agoNo one ever thought Trump himself had good opsec. (Well, barring the QAnon folks.) His opsec has traditionally leaned more towards the "how did they recognize me with this moustache on?" realm. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-ego-barron/2016/05/12/02ac99ec-16fe-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-e...
- runjake 3y agoLegendary where? His Twitter password was guessed[1]. Even worse, he used that password across several more services and didn't change them when his Twitter account was compromised. Legendarily bad, perhaps. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/17/dutch-trump-twitter-password-hack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/17/dutch-trump-...
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoIt's a joke. Trump once claimed that he understood technology better than anyone. And security. And the proper way to milk a cow (probably). Depending on the subject, he's the world's greatest expert, even if he can't spell the subject's name.
- roflyear 3y agoIs this regarding the Trump case? They mention "realDonaldTrump" in the transcript.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoyes.
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- joezydeco 3y agoYou mean the data you voluntarily submitted to HN, an organization you don't own or pay for? C'mon. If you want to be forgotten, don't participate in the first place.
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- roflyear 3y ago[flagged]
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- jimbob45 3y agoYou can delete posts within two hours and dang is usually good about deleting stuff if you email him directly from what others have said in the past. If you can’t delete it, you can edit it to be blank. Edit: two hours, thanks
- shagie 3y agoMany HN users have been on the other side of doing CCPA and GDPR data compliance and have more than passing familiarity with what is required and how that differs from what is desired. The four word summary of "right to be forgotten" does not properly encompass the PII that can be requested to be deleted nor differentiate it from other data which can be retained.
- postmodest 3y agoAt this point, Elon's purchase and seemingly-intentional brand-suicide looks more and more like a political favor. I mean, yes, if we shave this with Hanlon's Razor, the outcome is the same, but the rightward swing of Elon's public statements certainly makes this look more like quid-pro-quo than an oopsie.
- roflyear 3y agoI am not a fan of Musk or Twitter, but can you substantiate this? I'm about 1/10th of the way through the transcript and I haven't come to this conclusion yet.
- tmpz22 3y agoNot OP but I believe the main assertion is that Elon Musk's public rhetoric has become increasingly political over the past 5 years and that his dialogue conforms with modern conservative messaging. To break it down: * Hes posting a lot more * The content of his posts are proportionately more "culture-war" topics versus company/nerd/geek stuff that he used to post * Some of his posts align with populist conservative influencers I don't have data to back this up - just my anecdotal experience.
- edgyquant 3y agoWell the left side of the political isle has also became increasingly critical of him since 2016 when he briefly worked at the White House. He went from being a darling fighting climate change to an evil villain almost overnight.
- Kerb_ 3y agoThe left has been largely aware of Tesla's green washing for much longer than that.
- martin8412 3y agoHe is parroting Russian talking points for peace talks in Ukraine. Not that I know anyone who asked for his opinion on the subject.
- thrway0816 3y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y agoGiven it's a 206 page document that can't be searched, you might consider providing a page number if you're gonna quote it.
- Grazester 3y agoIf you really want to search it then you can OCR in Foxit or Acrobat and text search after
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoYou're complaining that a random judge doesn't know that Twitter is free?
- thrway0816 3y agoIt's a central and ongoing misunderstanding throughout the document that, beyond verified users, the Court does not realize Twitter account is not associated with a verified human identity. A judge should not be walking into this case completely ignorant of the subject matter that will be presented to them, but this one is.
- jellicle 3y agoCreating a Twitter account in recent years requires a valid email address and valid phone number, or at least it did until recently. Twitter definitely has a pretty good idea of which human being is behind the majority of its accounts.
- etchalon 3y agoJudges are assigned randomly. They have other cases. It's the lawyer's job to inform the judge on what they need to know.
- 3y ago
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI never heard of "fleets" before today either.
- rig666 3y agoIt's shocking to see the data that has been collected on a platform as simple as Twitter. During collage I was intern at a legal firm, and one thing I've learned is the more info someone can get on you the stronger the case. Regardless of the content weather good or bad. Makes me want to strengthen my opsec big time.
- jellicle 3y agoA brief summary: lawyers for Twitter were busy obfuscating and dissembling to the judge, pretending that Twitter was completely unable to formulate a SQL query to identify multiple accounts used by the same device and otherwise playing dumb, trying to throw enough technobabble to confuse a judge. The lawyers were also assembling a bunch of nonsense 1st Amendment arguments and hurling those at the wall too, hoping something would stick. The judge and prosecutors were not fooled. Eventually the judge fined Twitter for all their nonsense. So, contrary to some of the comments posted here already about dumb judges or whatever, this case shows a judge seeing through a bunch of techno-nonsense that lawyers tried to use to sow confusion.
- altairprime 3y agoThe non-disclosure order by the courts for this warrant was issued to Twitter on January 17th for six months; the day it expired, Reddit suddenly decided to purge all chat history prior to 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782915
- oskarkk 3y agoThey haven't really purged it, they just haven't copied older data to the new chat system (dumb decision). They still have that data, and you can get it by submitting a data export request: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/14ee0wz/comment/joxzve2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/14ee0wz/comment/joxzv...
- altairprime 3y agoNoted, thanks!
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- i_am_jl 3y agoThis judge is out for blood. HOLTZBLATT: I wanted to confirm that information because I don't want to make an incorrect representation to Your Honor. THE COURT: Of course not. We have already been through that.