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The 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 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 ago
  Was 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?
  - buildbot 3y ago
    They may not have a literal field for the account, but they are asking twitter to run a simple join across database fields for matching IP addresses in the time range. The jusge is clearly fed up with twitters bullshit - the control F comment does actually make a lot of sense, it should be that simple. For example, SELECT * FROM dms WHERE ip=donaldtrumpsaccountip
    - joezydeco 3y ago
      If the the IP is "the White House" there may be dozens of clients running out that single NAT IP. So you'd need a bit more correlation before you hit all of them with a warrant, I'd think. Some tracking cookie or some ID to show it's the same person behind the keyboard. As the transcript shows, the judge asked about payment (like a credit card # for correlation) but Twitter is free. Not saying it's a viable technique but I get the idea that judges hate warrants that vague.
      - nickthegreek 3y ago
        If you log into both accounts using the twitter mobile app there is most likely a device ID now associated with the accounts.
      - buildbot 3y ago
        Sure, but as others have said, you have device IDs, you have when Trump was traveling and using cellular data, etc. So there is a huge amount of info that can be used to relate accounts. Legally, it seems asking for a company to run essentially joins across their DB tables is accepted practice. Otherwise, how could warrant be obtained from google for all devices within a specific geolocation? Requires at least a few DB queries I'd imagine.
        joezydeco 3y ago
        A smoothed out device ID makes more sense. Thanks.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    They should be able to trivially determine, after the fact, that the two accounts were using the same IP, even if not at the time. (Of course, that doesn’t _necessarily_ mean they’re the same person).
- roflyear 3y ago
  Of course they have affiliated accounts - you can get banned from Twitter for ban evasion, so they most have something to put the two together.

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 ago
Was 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?
- buildbot 3y ago
  They may not have a literal field for the account, but they are asking twitter to run a simple join across database fields for matching IP addresses in the time range. The jusge is clearly fed up with twitters bullshit - the control F comment does actually make a lot of sense, it should be that simple. For example, SELECT * FROM dms WHERE ip=donaldtrumpsaccountip
  - joezydeco 3y ago
    If the the IP is "the White House" there may be dozens of clients running out that single NAT IP. So you'd need a bit more correlation before you hit all of them with a warrant, I'd think. Some tracking cookie or some ID to show it's the same person behind the keyboard. As the transcript shows, the judge asked about payment (like a credit card # for correlation) but Twitter is free. Not saying it's a viable technique but I get the idea that judges hate warrants that vague.
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      If you log into both accounts using the twitter mobile app there is most likely a device ID now associated with the accounts.
    - buildbot 3y ago
      Sure, but as others have said, you have device IDs, you have when Trump was traveling and using cellular data, etc. So there is a huge amount of info that can be used to relate accounts. Legally, it seems asking for a company to run essentially joins across their DB tables is accepted practice. Otherwise, how could warrant be obtained from google for all devices within a specific geolocation? Requires at least a few DB queries I'd imagine.
      - joezydeco 3y ago
        A smoothed out device ID makes more sense. Thanks.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  They should be able to trivially determine, after the fact, that the two accounts were using the same IP, even if not at the time. (Of course, that doesn’t _necessarily_ mean they’re the same person).
roflyear 3y ago
Of course they have affiliated accounts - you can get banned from Twitter for ban evasion, so they most have something to put the two together.