Feds creating database to track hate speech on Twitter

Truth is Treason in an Empire of Lies

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. Those behind the grant say: “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.” 

George Orwell was right all along. #doublespeak

This caged bird will be told what to sing.

The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.

The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”

One G-man’s “social pollution” is another free man’s First Amendment right. The very term sounds like something out of a 1920s Italian fascist tract. And why is the federal government even deciding which ideas are “false and misleading,” let alone tracking them?

According to the project’s grant, the service “could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”

In 2004, dissent was “the highest form of patriotism.” A decade later, it’s called “subversive propaganda” and categorized as the lowest form of treason. Truthy would add a button to Twitter so that people could report their neighbors and family members for Thoughtcrime against the State.

Filippo Menczer (who sounds like an author of that 1920s Italian fascist tract) is Truthy’s lead investigator and closely affiliated with “non-partisan” groups like President Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org and Greenpeace. The software’s very name comes from ardent conservative hater Stephen Colbert.

It’s hard to denounce the more paranoid allegations of Obama’s opponents when his administration routinely goes beyond their wildest imaginings.  We are definitely living in George Orwell's 1984.

These guys know their Orwell. Only a government inspired by the Ministry of Truth would quash “subversive propaganda” in the name of “open debate.”

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New Social Media Surveillance Program Violates Privacy to Keep You Safe

Joe Wright  

The latest press release from Virginia Tech University, posted in full below, uses a familiar sales pitch which asserts that the only way to keep the public safe is through pervasive surveillance.

Even amid the public outrage and pushback in the wake of the Snowden revelations, the establishment continues to push forward with justifications about why it is in our best interest to be under their constant watch.

Now, as Ebola has taken center stage as the latest threat to humanity, "ChatterGrabber" is being rolled out - a "machine-learning algorithm" that will theoretically help detect public health risks based on harvested communications. However, it goes far beyond the most extreme cases, and researchers are not hiding its wider applications. The press release is a must-read for its rare honesty, but here is the crux of the program:

ChatterGrabber has also been used to monitor tickborne diseases, such as Lyme disease, public sentiment involving vaccines, and gun violence and terrorism, serving as an early warning system for public health officials through suspicious tweets or conversations. (emphasis added)

Read on, it only gets worse:

Twitter User Appears to Have Live-Tweeted the Shooting of Michael Brown

A Twitter user who goes by the handle @TheePharoah and whose profile says he lives in St. Louis, Missouri, may have live-tweeted the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. 

Rolling Stone national-affairs reporter Tim Dickinson curated this series of tweets from @TheePharoah, which all have time stamps that match up with the timeline of Brown's death. The alleged witness also tweeted a photo of Brown lying dead in the street while two police officers stand over him. The man claims to live on the residential street where the shooting occurred, and some of the photos show that he took the pictures from behind what appears to be the wooden slats of a porch.

Witness to Brown killing

You can visit our Michael Brown article archive here
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Court in OWS Twitter Case Gets it Wrong Again

Hanni Fakhoury
EFF

Despite Twitter's (and our) best efforts, it has been ordered to disclose to the government all of the information it has on an Occupy Wall Street protester. 

We've been following the case of Malcolm Harris' -- arrested in connection with the OWS Brooklyn Bridge protest in October 2011 -- very closely. Charged with disorderly conduct, New York City prosecutors sent a broad subpoena to Twitter, seeking to obtain any and all information it had on Harris -- tweets, subscriber information, email addresses. From the very beginning, we suspected that the government was really after location information. And sure enough, after Harris challenged the subpoena, the NYC prosecutors admitted they wanted the information to show he was on the bridge at the time of his arrest.

Twitter Ordered to Turn Over Data on Occupy Protester

Activist Post

Twitter has been ordered by a New York judge to hand over the account information and tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested during the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge this past fall.

Reuters reports:

Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino, who is overseeing the hundreds of criminal cases stemming from Occupy-related arrests, rejected the idea that Twitter would violate protester Malcolm Harris' privacy by turning over the information. 

"If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy," the judge wrote in his decision. He said he would review the information himself and release relevant portions to both prosecutors and Harris' lawyer. 

The Saturday ruling, released on Monday, marks the second time in three months that Sciarrino has rejected an attempt to quash a subpoena in the case.

Twitter chief picked as Obama telecom advisor

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo
© AFP/Getty Images/File Justin Sullivan

AFP

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - US President Barack Obama named Twitter's chief and a high-ranking Microsoft executive among a handful of technology veterans to be appointed as telecommunications security advisors.

"I am proud to appoint such impressive men and women to these important roles, and I am grateful they have agreed to lend their considerable talents to this administration," Obama said in a White House press release available online Friday.

"I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead," he continued in reference to those he picked to join his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

US Secret Service takes to Twitter

 © AFP/File Indranil Mukherjee

AFP 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Secret Service, renowned for the sharp suited agents protecting the US president, made its debut on Twitter on Monday, saying the micro-blogging site could help recruiting.

The agency, which also has a uniformed branch and protects the grounds of the White House, has a second mission of preventing currency and bond fraud, and became the latest of a long list of US government agencies to join Twitter.

"The Internet is a valuable resource for people all over the world," said Secret Service Assistant Director Mickey Nelson.

"By using social media sites, we hope to supplement our recruitment efforts, while providing an informative, helpful tool to businesses and individuals who are interested in information from our agency."

Nelson said the @SecretService account would highlight the service's investigative mission and hand out information to local communities about security on presidential visits and other high-profile events.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Clinton says Twitter helps US tap into youth unrest

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reflected "the power of connection technologies as an accelerant of political, social, and economic change."

AFP Twitter

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday highlighted the need for the US government to use Twitter and other social media to connect with young people amid turbulent change in the Middle East and North Africa.

Following revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt fueled by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube exchanges, the US State Department set up Twitter accounts last week in Farsi, Arabic and other languages to get its message across.

"What we expect to do is to be communicating through the new social media with literally millions of people around the world because we want them to hear directly from us what our policies are," Clinton said.

"We want to use it to rebut some of the falsehoods and accusations that unfortunately are made against the United States," she said in an interview with ABC's "This Week" conducted Friday but broadcast Sunday.

"But mostly we want to be in the mix with this incredible young, energetic population that is seeking the same rights to express themselves as young people in the United States seek."


In its first Twitter feeds in the Iranian language Farsi on February 13, the State Department accused Iran of hypocrisy by supporting the revolt in Egypt but seeking to prevent anti-government demonstrations in Iran.

International and local Iranian media were banned from freely covering the massive wave of protest sparked by the disputed re-election in June 2009 of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But Iranians overcame the reporting ban by using social-networking and image-sharing websites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr despite efforts by local officials to cut off mobile phones and the Internet.

Clinton, making her second major speech on Internet freedom in the past year on Tuesday, announced that the State Department would also begin sending messages in Chinese, Russian and Hindi.

In her address, Clinton singled out China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, Syria and Vietnam as countries which practice censorship or restrict access to the Internet.

She noted that Syria had lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube last week but convicted a teenage girl of espionage on Monday and sentenced her to five years in prison for political poetry she wrote on her blog.

Clinton described the Internet as "the public space of the 21st century -- the world's town square, classroom, marketplace, coffee house, and nightclub."

She said protests in Egypt and Iran fueled by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reflected "the power of connection technologies as an accelerant of political, social, and economic change."

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