UnNews:Twitter feuds with US government
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| Twitter feuds with US government | 
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9 May 2016
WIKIA CITY, California -- Social media corporation Twitter announced that the U.S. Government will no longer have access to the only authorized way to sift through tweets in real time.
Ex-NSA chief John C. Inglis called it "hypocritical" for Twitter to refuse to give away to the government the data that it sells to private companies. ISIS operates thousands of Twitter accounts, and often uses tweets to coordinate terrorist attacks, when Wikia chat is down. Denying access to the government could be a "staggering loss of intelligence," according to a study from the Brookings Institution, which knows quite a lot about that.
Twitter was reportedly concerned about the "optics" of cooperating with U.S. spies, as the Obama administration is when Baz plays golf right after commenting on the beheading of a journalist, or tries to do the tango in Buenos Aires during a terror attack. The data are collected by a company completely separate from Twitter, except for being part-owned by it. The company aggregates and geo-tags tweets to assemble a database that is a gold mine to other companies. For example, by analyzing traffic to #AreTheBombsReady? Twitter was able to guide television networks to the exact location of imminent dead and wounded bodies. But Twitter believes people would abandon the service if it thought such information was going to the police and paramedics.
The National Security Agency has had a tense relationship with Silicon Valley, such as its searches through metadata, especially after Edward Snowdon revealed that the NSA was lying when it said it wasn't doing any searches at all.
The Twitter subsidiary said it will complete a $225,000 contract to provide analysis of tweets to the Department of Homeland Security, which performs jetway screenings and myriad other unspecified functions to prevent future terrorist attacks. "Just not to the spies," said a Twitter spokesperson, speaking not-for-attribution. "That wouldn't look right."
However, the White House said the government would not be hindered by not knowing what is trending on Twitter, and in fact has opened high-powered investigations of corruption at Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall, and of allegations of vote-buying in the Presidential election campaign of 1936.
Sources[edit]
- Katie Bo Williams "Twitter bars intelligence agencies from key data service". The Hill, May 9, 2016