justification – Techdirt (original) (raw)

I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy

from the the-pathetic-autocrat-edition dept

The last few days on Twitter have been, well, chaotic, I guess? Beyond the blocking of the ElonJet account, followed by the blocking of the @JoinMastodon account, then the blocking of journalists asking about all this and the silly made up defense of it, over the weekend, Twitter announced a new policy banning linking to or even displaying usernames on a whole host of other social media platforms:

The new “promotion of alternative social platforms policy,” which was quite obviously hastily crafted, said that “Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter.” It said that “at both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out … to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL.

The “prohibited platforms” list had some odd inclusions, and even odder exclusions:

This is… desperate? Silly?

But it also raised questions. Where was TikTok? Or YouTube? Or Gab? Or Parler? Or a bunch of other small new wannabes? You could say they’re too small, but then again, he included Nostr, a social media protocol that is brand new and has basically zero features. I have personally been playing with it, but I think only about 500 people are currently using it. Maybe. Probably fewer.

Of course, as usual, Musk’s biggest fans immediately started crafting silly breathless defenses of how this was totally consistent with Musk’s claims of bringing his “free speech absolutism” to the platform. Most of these defenses were pathetic. Perhaps none more so than his mother’s.

That’s Elon’s mom saying that his new proposal “makes absolute sense” because “when I give a talk for a corporation, I don’t promote other corporations. If I did, I would be fired on the spot and never booked again? Is that hard to understand?”

I mean, that is not hard to understand, but it’s also not an accurate description of the scenario. The people using Twitter are not paid to give talks “for Twitter.” And, if that were the standard, then, um, that wouldn’t just justify Twitter’s old practices of banning accounts for lots of things that any company would fire you for saying during a “company talk,” but actually make you wonder why Twitter didn’t ban a hell of a lot more people.

But, of course, that’s not the standard. Or the scenario.

And then, of course, a few hours later, Musk (facing pretty loud criticism of this latest policy change) appeared to do an about-face, though you’d have to be following him closely to actually realize it. First he defended it, saying “Twitter should be easy to use, but no more relentless free advertising of competitors. No traditional publisher allows this and neither will Twitter.”

Except that’s also not true. First of all, every other social media platform absolutely allows accounts to link to alternative social media. Second, even “traditional publishers” frequently will link to accounts on alternative social media and they will also (not always, but increasingly) acknowledge competing media providers.

Then he made it more vague saying “casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme.”

Which is not a reasonable policy. Because how does anyone know when they’ve cross that line? Either way, as anyone who works in this space knows, if you have a vague policy like “casually sharing occasional links is fine” while the written policy says no links, you’re going to end up in ridiculous situations, such as when famed startup investor/Musk fan/pontificator Paul Graham pointed out that the policy was so dumb he was leaving for Mastodon… and promptly got banned, leading Musk to promise to have the account restored.

Eventually, in a reply to an account known for posting nonsense conspiracy theories, Musk said that the “policy will be adjusted to suspending accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is promotion of competitors, which essentially falls under the no spam rule.”

After that, he posted a poll asking whether he should step down as CEO of Twitter. He lost, 57.5% to 42.5% (though as I’m writing, he’s not said anything further on the results, but I full expect that he’s going to shove someone else into the role while still owning and controlling the company).

The TwitterSafety account also ran a poll asking “should we have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms”, and while the poll still has a few hours left as I write this, it seems people are almost universally against it:

So, despite Elon arguing that not having such a policy is “absurd in the extreme” and his mother insisting that such a policy “makes absolute sense,” the “vox populi” on Twitter disagrees.

Why is he doing all this? What is going on?

It seems that I have a bit of experience understanding how new social media CEOs who come in on a wave of “bringing free speech back!” promises end up running the social media content moderation learning curve. Thus, I thought it might be useful to explain the basic thought process that normally one goes through here, and that likely created each of these results. It’s basically the same as how Parler’s then CEO John Matze went from “our content is moderated based off the FCC and the Supreme Court” to “posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED” in a matter of days.

Basically, it’s exactly what I wrote in my speed run article. These naive social media CEOs come in, thinking that the thing “missing” from social media is “free speech.” But they’re wrong. Even if you strongly believe in “free speech” (as I do), that doesn’t mean you want to allow crazy assholes screaming insults at guests in your house. You ask those people to leave, so that your guests can feel welcome. That doesn’t mean you’re against free speech, you’re just saying “go be a crazy asshole somewhere else.”

Every “free speech” CEO eventually realizes this in some form or another. In Musk’s somewhat selfish view of the world, he only seems to notice the concerns when it comes to himself. While he’s had no problem encouraging brigading and harassing of those he dislikes, when a random crazy person showed up near a car with his child in it, he insisted (falsely, as we now know) that it was an account on his website that put him in danger, and banned it.

But, of course, reporters are going to report on it, and in that frenzied state of “this is bad, must be stopped,” he immediately jumped to “well, anyone talking about that account must also be bad, and obviously should also be stopped.”

The “links to other social media” freakout was likely related to all of this as well. First people were linking to the ElonJet account on other social media (which Musk referred to — incorrectly — as “ban evasion”) and so he saw social media as a sneaky tool for getting around his paradise view of how Twitter should work. Also, while there’s no confirmation on this point from Twitter’s numbers, it sure feels like these other social media sites are getting a nice inflow of users giving up on (or at least decreasing their usage of) Twitter.

The biggest beneficiary (by far) seems to be Mastodon, so Musk could view this as a “kill two birds with one stone” move: trying to blunt Mastodon’s growth while also (in his mind) stopping people from visiting the “dangerous” ElonJet account on Mastodon. Except, of course, the opposite of that occurred, and he created a sort of Streisand Effect bump for Mastodon users:

Chart showing mastodon growth over the past week

See those bumps in new signups? Those are Elon bumps. Each time he does something crazy, more people sign up.

So, based on that, Elon quickly started banning reporters who he disliked and who were asking what he saw as sketchy questions, and then tried to retcon policies to justify those bans. First it was the nonsense about “assassination coordinates” and then it became about links to social media. Reporter Taylor Lorenz got accused of both. Elon first claimed that her account was suspended for doxing someone “previously” in her reporting (which is something Lorenz-haters have falsely insisted she did). But Twitter directly told Lorenz she was banned for a tweet showing her accounts on other sites:

This is how tyrants rule when they want to pretend they’re ruling by principles. Punish those who oppose you, and then retcon in some kind of policy later, which you insist is an “obviously” good policy, to justify the bans.

Of course, in the old days, when Twitter had a thoughtful trust & safety team, at least they’d make some effort to game out new policies. They’d discuss how those policies might lead to bad outcomes, or how they might be confusing, or how they might be abused. But Elon and friends have no time for that. They need to ban people who upset him, and come up with the policies to justify it later.

That’s how you end up with the stupidly broad “no doxing” policy and the even dumber “no other social media” policy — and only then do they discover the problems of the policies, and try to adjust them on the fly.

There are two other facts here worth noting, and both apply to a very typical pattern found in authoritarians taking over governments while preaching about how they’re “bringing freedom back.”

First, they often will lie about the oppression that they claim happened under the last regime. That’s absolutely been the case here. As the Twitter files actually showed, Twitter’s former regime was not a bunch of “woke radicals censoring conservatives.” They were a thoughtful group of people doing an impossible task with not nearly enough resources, time, or information. As such, sometimes they made mistakes. But on the whole they were trying to create reasonable policies. This is why all evidence, across multiple studies, showed that Twitter actually bent over backwards to not be biased against conservatives, but Trumpists still insisted it was “obvious” that they were moderating based on bias.

The usefulness for the people now in charge, though, is that they feel they have free rein to do what they (falsely) insisted the previous regime was doing. You see it among many Musk fans now (including some high profile ones who should know better *cough* Marc Andreessen *cough*), who are mocking anyone pointing out the nonsense justifications and hypocrisy of Musk’s new policies, which clearly violate his old stated plans for the site. The people justifying this say, mockingly, “oooooooh, look who’s suddenly supportive of free speech.” The more vile version of this is “oh, well how does it feel now that you’re on the other end?” The more direct version is just “well, you did it to us.”

Except all of that is bullshit. Because people talking about it aren’t screaming about “free speech,” so much as pointing out how Musk is going back on his word. A thoughtful commentator might realize that maybe there were good reasons for older decisions, and it wasn’t just “woke suppression of free speech.” But, instead, they justify their new actions based on it being okay because of the falsely believed cruelty of the previous regime.

Second, this is pretty common with “revolutionaries” promising freedom. When they discover that freedom also allows people to oppose the new leader, those “disloyal” to the new regime need to be put down and silenced. In their minds, they justify it, because the ends (“eventual freedom”) justify the means of getting there. So, yes, the king must kill the protestors, but it’s only because those protestors might ruin this finely planned journey to more freedom.

So, in the mind of the despot who wants to believe they’re bringing a “better world of freedom” to the public, it’s okay to deny that freedom to the agitators and troublemakers, because they’re the ones “standing in the way” of freedom to the wider populace.

It seems like some of both of those factors are showing up here.

Filed Under: assassination coordinates, autocrats, content moderation, dictators, doxing, elon musk, justification, social media
Companies: twitter

Released Memos Justifying Warrantless Wiretapping Point To Limitless Executive Branch Authority

from the in-times-of-war,-we'll-do-whatever-we-want dept

The government’s predilection for waiting until late Friday to deliver bad news remains unchanged. Two memos justifying wireless wiretapping were released Friday night, buying it a few days time to prep before dealing with any uncomfortable questions raised by these documents.

Both memos [PDF links: first, second] have multiple redactions. The first memo has had entire groups of pages withheld, as well as pages so heavily-redacted they may as well have been deleted. Additional details are scant, leaving readers to read between the redactions in hopes of cobbling together the government’s rationale for the warrantless wiretapping of calls originating in the United States.

What does remain is mostly post-9/11 justifications about needing to respond to a new threat in new ways. And that “new way” was apparently to give the President a blank surveillance check to do with what he wished.

The broad outlines of the argument — that the president has inherent constitutional power to monitor Americans’ communications without a warrant in a time of war — were known, but the sweep of the reasoning becomes even clearer in the memos written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, who was head of President George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“We conclude only that when the nation has been thrust into an armed conflict by a foreign attack on the United States and the president determines in his role as commander in chief . . . that it is essential for defense against a further foreign attack to use the [wiretapping] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority” to order warrantless wiretapping — “an authority that Congress cannot curtail,” Goldsmith wrote in a redacted 108-page memo dated May 6, 2004.

The Stellar Wind program, as it was known, was implemented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, without Congressional approval. The warrantless wiretapping was rationalized into legality years after implementation, and memos like these were the delivery vehicles. The government doesn’t trust Americans to understand why it believes a pseudo-war justifies violations of civil liberties. Those parts are blacked out. What we’re left with is supposed to be enough.

And it’s not just Stellar Wind. Other dragnet programs (internet/email/phone metadata) are rationalized as well in these pages. The May 6, 2004 memo by Jack Goldsmith does everything it can to eliminate Fourth Amendment protections, as Marcy Wheeler points out.

It shows that the memo discusses content, discusses telephony metadata, discusses something else, then concludes that content and metadata are both kosher under the Fourth Amendment.

The second memo, also written by Goldsmith, does more of the same. This one throws in the then-recent decision by the Supreme Court, finding the detainment of a US citizen (Yaser Esam Hamdi) in Afghanistan was justified because it occurred during a time of war. According to Goldsmith, intercepting communications without a warrant is a “fundamental and accepted” part of waging war. Again, the argument finds in favor of the Executive Branch acting unilaterally to combat terrorism. Anything more detailed or subtly written is buried behind black bars or removed entirely.

But the gist of it is: Smith v. Maryland means intelligence agencies can collect nearly anything they deem metadata without tripping over the Fourth Amendment — and if these small limits are exceeded, the Executive Branch has the power to override any objections.

Filed Under: doj, jack goldsmith, justification, surveillance, warrantless wiretapping

Judge Gives DOJ Until The End Of The Month To Submit Declassified Opinion Containing FISA Court's Justifications For The Section 215 Program

from the surveillance-state-sausage-making dept

It appears the government will finally be releasing the FISA court’s thought process justifying the mass harvesting of Americans’ metadata from fully-immunized telcos under the Section 215 program (now 501). An earlier court order from FISA judge Dennis Saylor discussing the potential release of this court opinion described it thusly:

The government has identified the Opinion issued in Docket Number BR 13-25 on February 19, 2013, as one that “contain[s] analysis by this Court evaluating the meaning, scope, and/or constitutionality” of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. § 1861.

Whether it will be instructive and enlightening (rather than stuffed full of Third Party Doctrine bullshit and circular “it’s legal because it’s legal” reasoning) remains to be seen. But the last two words of that previous sentence are something at least: it will “be seen.” And, apparently, with a minimum of redactions.

For the reasons stated herein, the Court is directing the government to prepare and declassify a redacted version of the opinion issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in Docket Number BR-25 on February 19, 2013.

The ACLU (and others) have pushed for a release of this particular FISC opinion for more than a year now. The court doesn’t even attempt to address the First Amendment implications of withholding the opinion from the public because there are plenty of other angles justifying its release. The court notes that the release would serve the public’s interest as recent disclosures (both authorized and unauthorized) have brought the Section 215 program into the court of public opinion (as well as actual federal courtrooms).

While the FISA court may have arrived at this conclusion based on ongoing events, the government arrived somewhere completely different.

After appropriations had been reinstated and a timetable for declassification review had been set, the government advised that, “[a]fter careful review of the [February 19, 2013] Opinion by senior intelligence officials and the U.S. Department of Justice, the Executive Branch has determined that the Opinion should be withheld in full and a public version of the Opinion cannot be provided.”

The FISA court asked for the combined brain power of the DOJ, Executive Branch and an unspecified number of “senior intelligence officials” to explain their thought process and got a lot of unintelligible mumbles and floor-staring in return.

Noting that “the government has provided no explanation of this conclusion,” the Court ordered the government to submit “a detailed explanation of its conclusion that the Opinion is classified in full and cannot be made public, even in a redacted form.”

Duly chastened, the brain trust resorted to one of its favorites: making this info public would jeopardize ongoing investigations. But it conceded that the opinion could still be declassified if a sufficient amount of black ink is spilled. The FISC pressed harder, asking for narrower redactions that removed only the targets in question, rather than the accompanying language that would clarify the court’s stance on the bulk collection issue. Surprisingly, despite its lack of practice with operating anything narrowly-defined or targeted, the government managed to come up with a redacted version that satisfied the unexpectedly demanding FISA court.

[T]he Court notes that releasing the February 19, 2013 Opinion pursuant to the Second Redaction Proposal achieves the basic objective sought by the movants: disclosure of the Court’s legal reasoning, to the extent that it can reasonably be segregated from properly classified facts. There is an inherent risk that the end product of such an exercise “may confuse or obscure, rather than illuminate, the decision[ ] in question.” In re Motion for Release of Court Records, 526 F. Supp.2d at 495. On balance, however, the Court is satisfied that publication of the February 19, 2013 Opinion in conformance with the Second Redaction Proposal would enhance, rather than detract from, public understanding of the Court’s reasoning as to the legal issues presented.

Well, I guess we’ll see what it looks like when we get it. August 29th is deadline for the submission of a formally declassified version of the (supposedly) narrowly-redacted opinion. The FISA court then needs to give it a quick once-over before publishing it “immediately” to its website. I don’t expect to see it any sooner than the end of this month, but we’ll be taking a good look at it when it finally arrives.

Filed Under: bulk data collection, bulk phone records, doj, fisa court, fisc, foia, justification, legal justification, nsa, section 215

NSA Agents Told To Withhold Target Information From Those In Charge Of Oversight

from the and-the-hits-keep-coming dept

There’s so much information that’s coming out of last night’s Washington Post bombshell that just continues to yield incredible information about what defenders of these programs have been saying as compared to what’s actually happening. Here’s another one. One of the documents released with the report, via Ed Snowden, shows that NSA agents were directly told to give their overseers as little information as possible. The document explains to agents the process for justifying why they were requesting targeting (i.e., a more detailed look concerning an individual or group — not just at that person’s communications, but potentially anyone even remotely connected to them), and makes it clear that they are to give the bare minimum necessary to fulfill their reporting requirements, but not even the slightest bit beyond that. In fact, they’re told to give a single short sentence, and to make sure it includes no “extraneous information.”

The basic premise of this process is to memorialize why you the analyst have requested targeting. This rationale will be provided to our external FISA Amendment Act (FAA) overseers, the Department of Justice and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, for all FAA targeting.

While we do want to provide our FAA overseers with the information they need, we DO NOT want to give them any extraneous information…. This rationale can be no longer than one short sentence.

[….] Your rationale MUST NOT contain any additional information including: probable cause-like information (i.e., proof of your analytic judgment), how you came to your analytic conclusions, any RAGTIME information, classification marking or selector information.

The document goes on to list a variety of “example” rationale sentences, all pretty short and sweet, which basically demonstrate to NSA agents how to remove any pertinent information for oversight, while still giving a “reason” for targeting someone. It’s a lesson in stripping out information and, as the Washington Post notes, replacing it with “generic” info that will pass muster with the folks supposedly in charge of oversight. As an aside, while parts of them are redacted, there are a few “fake” names given, including “Mohammad Badguy” and “Muhammad Fake Name.” No profiling there.

Either way, this once again suggests that the “oversight” going on here is something of a joke. Analysts are directly being told to be careful not to explain very much at all, giving the briefest (“one short sentence, no extraneous information”) basis for getting access to all sorts of information concerning a “target” — which might include a variety of communications and metadata concerning a huge number of people very, very, very loosely connected with that target. It certainly suggests that this idea of “oversight” is pretty laughable. Concoct a one sentence “rationale” that sounds vaguely plausible, and it appears that no one’s going to ask any questions at all.

Filed Under: justification, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight, targeting, withhold information