Senators Threaten Twitter For Allowing Iranian Official Who Helped De-Escalate Tensions Via Twitter To Tweet

from the politicians-censoring-politicians dept

It's somewhat amazing how quickly officials lean into the idea of censorship as the first response to other officials saying things they don't like. Rep. Nancy Pelosi's office asked both Twitter and Facebook to remove a tweet by Donald Trump (both companies refused). Trump's tweet showed a misleadingly cut video of Nancy Pelosi. Similarly, Rep. Ro Khanna -- who has done some great things, including looking into the harm caused by FOSTA -- demanded that Twitter delete that same tweet, falsely stating that "falsity has never been a part of the 1st Amendment," which is (to repeat myself), false.

Now, if you're a Trump supporter about to get up in arms over a Democratic politician asking Twitter to delete a tweet from the President, slow down a bit, because around the same time, four Republican Senators were in the process of sending an angry letter to Twitter, telling Jack Dorsey that his company was breaking the law by allowing Iranian officials to tweet. The letter, sent by Senators Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio (all of whom, I assure you, have cynically claimed to support free speech in the past), notes that Trump signed an executive order last year putting sanctions on Iranian officials and preventing US companies from providing goods and services to them:

On June 24 2019, the President invoked his IEEPA powers through Executive Order 13876... blocking the property of "the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic [Ali Kamenei] of Iran and the Iranian Supreme Leader's Office" and well as persons who act or purport to act on the Supreme Leader's behalf. On July 31, 2019, OFAC designated Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pursuant to E.O. 13876. All Americans -- including you and Twitter -- are prohibited from "the making of any contribution or provision of . . . goods[] or services" to them.

Note that in addition to the general prohibition on Americans providing services to SDNs, Section 1(a)(2)(C) of E.O. 13876 makes it a sanctionable offense for "any person" to have "provided... technological support for, or goods or services to" persons designated pursuant to that E.O.

Twitter continues to provide Internet-based communications services to Khamenei and Zarif. Twitter is aware of these accounts and their links to the Iranian regime. The Supreme Leader's English-language account, @khamenei_ir, has had tweets removed for advocating murder. The account follows less than 10 other accounts, including his office's Twitter feeds in Urdu, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Persian, which are straightforward to identify and locate. Zarif's account, @JZarif, is verified.

The letter also claims that the Ayatollah gets no free speech protections at all, while simultaneously saying that Twitter should never "censor" American's "political speech."

While the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of Americans -- and Twitter should not be censoring the political speech of Americans -- the Ayatollah enjoys zero protections from the United States Bill of Rights. And, as the leader of the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism -- directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of U.S. citizens -- the Ayatollah and any American companies providing him assistance are entirely subject to U.S. sanctions laws.

A Twitter account is a service. Neither GL D-1 nor any other authority exempts Twitter from American sanctions. We therefore call on you to comply with those sanctions by ceasing the provision of services to Khamenei, Zarif, and any other designated Iranian entity.

I'm no expert in the laws regarding U.S. sanctions, so I'm not sure of the legal responsibilities here. But it does seem patently ridiculous to think that merely publishing a foreign leader's speech should violate any such sanctions. It would certainly open up a lot of serious questions about what counts as providing "services" to sanctioned individuals.

But, even more to the point, is that this letter comes just a month after it was shown that Zarif -- who the Senators want Twitter to ban -- and Trump himself may have averted escalations with Iran thanks to both of them being on Twitter. That story highlighted how Zarif indicated via Twitter that Iran did not wish to escalate matters with the US, and Trump quickly tweeted a similar response. Diplomacy via tweet. Of course, if these Senators got their way, that would not be allowed.

Given all that, it makes you wonder why Senators Cruz, Blackburn, Cotton, and Rubio are looking to cut off that means of communication.

Filed Under: donald trump, free speech, iran, javad zarif, marco rubio, marsha blackburn, sanctions, services, ted cruz, tom cotton
Companies: twitter

Google Says Clearview's Site Scraping Is Wrong; Clearview Reminds Google It Scrapes Sites All The Time

from the twospidermans.jpg dept

Clearview's business model has resulted in some mutual finger pointing. The most infamous of facial recognition tech companies outsources its database development. Rather than seeking input from interested parties, it scrapes sites for pictures of faces and whatever personal info accompanies them. The scraped info forms the contents of its facial recognition database, putting law enforcement only a few app clicks away from accessing over 3 billion images.

The companies being scraped have claimed this is a violation of their terms of service, if not actually illegal. It's not clear that it's actually illegal, even if it does violate the restrictions placed on users of these services. Twitter has already sent a cease-and-desist to Clearview, but it will probably take a court to make this stick. Unfortunately, Clearview's actions could lead to some damaging precedent if Twitter forces the issue. Given the number of sites affected by Clearview's scraping efforts, it's probably only a matter of time before this gets litigious.

But the finger pointed by Google at Clearview hasn't obtained the reaction Google may have hoped for. As CBS News reports, Clearview has returned fire by comparing its business model to Google's business model.

Google and YouTube have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI, a facial recognition app that scrapes images from websites and social media platforms, CBS News has learned.

[...]

[Clearview CEOP Hoan] Ton-That also argued that Clearview AI is essentially a search engine for faces. "Google can pull in information from all different websites," he said. "So if it's public and it's out there and could be inside Google search engine, it can be inside ours as well."

He's not wrong. Google's bots crawl the internet non-stop, building a database for its search engine. But there is one key difference: website owners can opt out of Google's indexing.

"Most websites want to be included in Google Search, and we give webmasters control over what information from their site is included in our search results, including the option to opt-out entirely. Clearview secretly collected image data of individuals without their consent, and in violation of rules explicitly forbidding them from doing so," [YouTube spokesperson Alex Thomas] said in the statement to CBS News.

There's no way to opt out of Clearview's "service," other than just not existing on the internet. Ton-That is correct in assuming there's very little legal exposure in scraping publicly-available images from the net, but these statements don't make him or his company any more sympathetic. Ton-That is serving up untested AI to as many law enforcement agencies as possible, encouraging them to test drive the app using faces of friends and family even as the company states the software should only be used for approved law enforcement purposes.

It also claims an accuracy rate of 99.6% for searches, but that number hasn't been rigorously tested. What appears to be happening is a mass rollout of untested AI to law enforcement agencies via demo/trial accounts. Clearview claims to be working with over 600 law enforcement agencies but very few agencies have stated publicly they've used Clearview to perform investigations.

Clearview's packaging of public information into a law enforcement app is unpleasant, but likely legal. The same thing goes on behind the scenes of multiple data aggregators that sell info and analytics directly to government agencies. The main difference here is Clearview hasn't been shy about its desire to pitch a cheap app/database to law enforcement even as its product remains unproven and untested. And it puts cops a lot closer to their dystopian dream of being able to demand identification from anyone they run into on the streets.

Filed Under: ai, cease and desist, facial recognition, scraping, terms of service
Companies: clearview, clearview ai, google, twitter

Twitter Suspends Reporter For 'Posting Private Info' That Is Merely Internal Deutsche Bank Email That Could Implicate Trump

from the content-moderation-at-scale dept

Once again, I need to refer you to Masnick's Impossibility Theorem, on how it is effectively impossible to do content moderation at scale well. The latest example? Twitter suspended the account of Scott Stedman, the founder of the investigative news site, Forensic News. A few weeks back, Forensic News had a pretty incredible scoop, highlighting how a Russian government-controlled bank, Gazprombank, sent over $500 million to the American subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, at about the same time that very same subsidiary was lending nearly $400 million to Donald Trump. Deutsche Bank has run into trouble for its handling of Russian government-connected money, including its role in helping the Russians launder money.

The new evidence appears to come from Val Broeksmit, the stepson of a former senior Deutsche Bank exec. Broeksmit's story -- as covered in the craziest NY Times article you'll ever read -- is quite incredible and worth reading up on, as it shows how he has access to all of this internal Deutsche Bank info. In this case, the key detail of interest was an internal "breach report" sent to the senior Broeksmit, showing that the bank's liabilities exceeded its assets. As the report goes on to note, an absolutely huge percentage of the American subsidiary of Deutsche Bank's liabilities were to Russia in 2013. As the article details, nearly $3 billion of its liabilities were Russian in origin, approximately triple the next largest creditor, Switzerland.

All that's very interesting, but what does any of it have to do with content moderation? Well... right after the Forensic News report went out, Stedman noted that his website was under attack, and it looks like someone went after his Twitter account as well, trying to report it. They were successful, as it turns out. At issue was one key piece of evidence that Forensic News used in its report: the emails about the "breach report." Stedman posted images of this email to show the basis of the story. And, it appears that enough people reported it to Twitter, that they suspended his account for "posting private information":

If you somehow can't see the embedded image, it shows the notice from Twitter saying that his tweet showing "the original email" about the breach report violated Twitter's rules for "posting private information... without their express authorization and permission." If you look for that original tweet now, you currently see this:

It is not difficult to see how this happened. It seems likely that a lot of folks who'd rather this story go away took to reporting various Stedman tweets to try to silence him. The reported tweets get reviewed by a content moderation staff, and one of the "rules" is no posting of private information. The evidence is someone's private email. And, so, a content moderator says "that violates the rules." Now, of course, there's supposed to be a "newsworthy exception" to content moderation practices, but is the harried outsourced moderation person, who has a giant queue to get through, going to take the time to understand that this revelation of an email was key to a pretty big news story? Of course not. There's some spam or whatnot to takedown next.

Obviously, it would be great if it were humanly possible to carefully investigate each of these reports, but if that happened, the queue would just get longer and longer and longer, and we'd hear complaints in the other direction, about how Twitter never responds to legitimate reports of tweets that violates its rules.

In the end, there's really no great answer -- though I will note that it's really only because of this effort to silence Stedman's reporting and evidence that I became aware of this story in the first place... There's some sort of name for that kind of thing, I think.

Filed Under: content moderation at scale, content moderation is impossible, emails, newsworthy, private info, scott stedman, val broeksmit
Companies: deutsche bank, forensic news, twitter

Twitter Moves To Quash Fishing Expedition Subpoena For Info On Devin Nunes Cow By Devin Nunes' Lawyer In Unrelated Case

from the good-for-them dept

Last week, we wrote about the details of how it appeared that Devin Nunes' lawyer, Steven Biss, appeared to be using his subpoena power to try to unearth the identity of the parody account for "Devin Nunes Cow" in a totally unrelated case. I'm kind of amazed that no one else has really picked up on this story, because it's crazy. Biss has been representing Nunes in his various (highly questionable) defamation lawsuits, including the very first, which was focused on trying to expose a couple parody accounts that mocked Nunes, a Congressional Representative who really needs to grow some thicker skin. We've highlighted how much of Nunes' activity in that case in particular appears to be a fishing expedition to find out the identities of some of his critics.

What was so crazy about the story last week was that this new subpoena, sent to Twitter and seeking out information (including direct messages) from a variety of Twitter accounts, including @DevinCow, was in a totally unrelated case (the details of which are complex, and we tried to cover in that original post). As we highlighted, there were a bunch of questions raised by this -- first, sending a subpoena to Twitter to access someone's DMs is ridiculous. It would violated the Stored Communications Act. Twitter is barred from handing out such communications via civil subpoena. The correct process for Biss, if those communications are so vital to his case, would be to subpoena the users directly. But, of course, that would tip them off. The next big problem was that it appeared that at least two of the names on the list of Twitter accounts that were subpoenaed (and possibly more) had no connection whatsoever with the case at hand, involving a dispute between a well known lawyer and a well known PR executive. But they were relevant to the Devin Nunes suit.

On Tuesday, Twitter stepped in a filed a scathing motion to quash the subpoena, noting "a litany of substantive defects."

The Subpoena suffers from a litany of substantive defects and must be quashed. First, the Subpoena seeks identifying information of pseudonymous Twitter accounts without satisfying the established First Amendment requirements for unmasking anonymous online speakers... Second, it violates the federal Stored Communications Act ("SCA")... by commanding Twitter to disclose the contents of communications.... Third, it imposes an undue burden on Twitter by commanding it to produce document that could be obtained from a party to the lawsuit.... Fourth, and finally, the Subpoena imposes an undue burden on Twitter by demanding information that is irrelevant to the underlying action.

That last one is the understated way of pointing out that Biss is trying to subpoena people totally unrelated to this case. The motion makes the issue explicitly clear:

But the Subpoena is not merely defective and unlawful. One of its demands--for identifying information about the Twitter account @DevinCow--also appears to have been made for an improper purpose: to end-run around discovery disputes in an unrelated lawsuit. Nothing about the Fitzgibbon Litigation suggests that the @DevinCow account is in any way relevant to its claims or counterclaims--indeed, no reference to the account appears anywhere in any pleading. The anonymous speaker @DevinCow, however, has been named as Twitter's co-defendant in another, unrelated state-court action in which Fitzgibbon's counsel, Mr. Steven S. Biss, represents a different plaintiff.... Mr Biss has repeatedly sought in that other action, without success, to force Twitter and others to disclose information that might bear on the identity of @DevinCow, i.e. the very same information he is now demanding from Twitter through the Subpoena at issue here. The Subpoena's demand for @DevinCow's account-opening information thus appears to be an attempt to bypass the discovery process in Nunes. Such gamesmanship heightens the need for this Court to swiftly quash the Subpoena.

The motion goes on to detail the many times and many ways in which Biss has tried to unmask @DevinCow throughout the lawsuit.

It also notes that Twitter's lawyer directly raised these issues with Biss and "Mr. Biss refused to withdraw the Subpoena" and that he pointed them to two tweets made by the defendant in this case, lawyer Jesselyn Radack, replying to @DevinCow. However, as Twitter notes, neither of those had anything to do with the plaintiff in this case, Fitzgibbon. And, considering the main points of this case are (fairly questionable) claims that Radack was conspiring with others on Twitter to defame Fitzgibbon, it seems like any such tweets would need to relate to Fitzgibbon in some manner. Later, Biss agreed to narrow the subpoena to get around the Stored Communications Act issue, saying Twitter could black out the details of communications, but he still wanted to see the metadata. And then there's this:

Counsel for Fitzgibbon asserted both that those 17 accounts, including @DevinCow, are "obviously" relevant to the Fitzgibbon Litigation, and that he has evidence indicating that @DevinCow has privately communicated with Radack via the Twitter platform... But he flatly refused Twitter's requests that he substantiate those assertions.

It then goes through all the many other reasons for the subpoena to be quashed, and then says that the court should award Twitter fees and costs.

The awarding of fees and costs is particularly appropriate where, as here, "a party issues a subpoena in bad faith, [or] for an improper purpose."

It will be interesting to watch what comes next. Also, if the court does award fees, I wonder who will be paying them? There have already been questions about who's been funding Nunes' lawsuits. Would Fitzgibbon have to pay the fees because his lawyer tried to use his case to fish for info in another case? Is that the kind of representation that Fitzgibbon wants?

Filed Under: anonymity, devin nunes, devincow, fishing expedition, jesselyn radack, steven biss, subpoenas, trevor fitzgibbon
Companies: twitter

Is Devin Nunes' Lawyer Using Questionable Subpoenas In An Unrelated Case To Seek Info On Satirical @DevinCow Account?

from the what-a-bizarre-case dept

Buckle up, because here's a wild one. Over the weekend, a ton of people sent me a tweet from "The Sparrow Project" that many people took to mean that Rep. Devin Nunes -- the Congressional Representative who spent much of 2019 filing highly questionable SLAPP suits against news organizations, journalists, political operatives, critics, and, most famously, a satirical internet cow -- has issued a highly questionable subpoena for The Sparrow Project's private Twitter DMs.

However, while that tweet may have implied it was Nunes, it is not. The case merely involves Nunes' lawyer, Steven Biss, who is the lawyer in a separate case. But there are many oddities involved in this subpoena -- and Nunes' cases may be tangentially connected in a manner that seems to raise more questions about Biss' legal strategy. Before we go any further, however, I will say that the case that the subpoena comes from is a messy one. I am not going to go into all of the background here -- hopefully just enough to understand the nature of this subpoena -- but I will note that there are many people on both sides of this case who seem to feel fairly confident about what happened between two people, when the truth is only those two people know what really happened, so I will not take any position on the specific claims underlying the two cases at issue. There are also a bunch of people floating trollish conspiracy theories -- again, on both sides -- and if you want to waste a lot of time around a lot of nonsense, there are some rabbit holes to go down, most of which will frustrate and confuse you. I don't recommend that.

The case stems from accusations that lawyer Jesselyn Radack, who has represented Ed Snowden and other whistleblowers, made regarding Trevor FitzGibbon, who ran a PR firm that represented Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, The Intercept and some other well known organizations. In 2015, FitzGibbon's PR firm shut down following allegations of sexual harassment and assault. In 2018, after it was reported that no criminal charges would be brought against FitzGibbon, he (with Biss as his attorney) sued Radack, claiming she defamed him in saying that he sexually assaulted her. You can read the (redacted) amended complaint and follow the rest of the docket, but it gets pretty salacious and a lot of accusations are thrown back and forth and you don't really need to know those details to understand the issue we're discussing here, so I won't point you directly to them.

What matters in this instance is that after a fairly contentious process, the two parties settled in May of last year. It is also at least worth noting that the court held Radack in contempt, which highlights at least some of the contentiousness of the proceedings. Separately, because the original complaint (which was later sealed in part because of this) in the original case apparently included somewhat revealing photos that FitzGibbon claimed Radack had sent him (part of his effort to show whatever relationship they had was consensual), Radack separately sued FitzGibbon, claiming that his filing violated Virginia's revenge porn law.

A month after FitzGibbon's first case against Radack was settled, he sued Radack again, claiming that (among other things) she had breached the settlement agreement from the original case, and tacking on new defamation claims. The original settlement agreement appears to have included clauses saying that they wouldn't talk about each other on social media, and also that they wouldn't "direct, request, encourage, entice, procure or otherwise cause any third party..." to post on social media about the other.

In the new case, FitzGibbon (again using Biss as his lawyer), alleges that Radack did use social media to talk about FitzGibbon, and suggests that since many others, including followers of Radack, have tweeted about him, it violates the clause not to encourage (etc.) others to do so. This starts with Radack's very first tweet after settling the case, in which she (as per the settlement) posted a short tweet noting that the original case had been settled and she wanted to "retract and withdraw every allegation and statement I have ever made against Trevor Fitzgibbon." Some supporters of Radack responded to that tweet with statements against FitzGibbon, which the lawsuit argues breaches the settlement agreement.

It also highlights a bunch of other tweets by Radack, some of which it claims are defamatory, even though they seem quite general, don't mention FitzGibbon, and could easily be about someone else entirely. Just a few examples of tweets called out in this follow up lawsuit that seem like a huge stretch:

It seems pretty difficult to argue that those either breach the agreement or that they are defamatory towards FitzGibbon. The complaint does go on to assert "common law conspiracy" claims because other accounts started tweeting things about FitzGibbon that might reach the level of defamation. I won't repost them here, but those tweets do make direct claims about FitzGibbon, and if they are false, and were posted with knowledge of their falsity, might possibly qualify as defamation. Of course, the knowledge of their falsity or making the statements with "reckless disregard for the truth" (the standard for actual malice necessary to make a defamation claim) seem like a pretty high bar that would be difficult to reach.

Radack has asked the judge to dismiss much of the case on jurisdictional grounds and for failure to state a claim (basically saying that even if everything claimed is true, it still doesn't violate the law). Frankly, I find that her argument for the 12(b)(6) failure to state a claim is pretty convincing, and FitzGibbon/Biss' opposition motion to be pretty weak. It spends a lot of time arguing why there are some cases where opinion can be defamatory, and then highlights how some of the tweets from other people appear to be defamatory, but makes little effort to show how that makes her statements defamatory.

And that finally brings us around to the tweet at the top that is the reason for this post. If Biss could show that Radack did, in fact, communicate with others to make public statements about FitzGibbon, then at the very least you could argue that it was a breach of the settlement agreement. And, thus, one could make an argument that there are some reasonable situations in which such communications could be subpoenaed as part of the discovery process, to determine whether or not Radack had, in fact, breached the contract, and somehow encouraged others to say things publicly about FitzGibbon.

But, that possibility of situations existing where it might make sense to seek discovery of such communications is about as far as I'll go in giving Biss any credit here. Because almost every other part of what's been made public so far is problematic. First of all, the subpoena is to Twitter, and not to the individuals involved in any communications:

That's a problem on multiple levels, including that the Stored Communications Act literally forbids this kind of subpoena. While most people know of the SCA as it concerns government requests for communications, it also bars internet service providers from revealing content information to private actors in civil suits. So, even if there were legit reasons to seek these communications, sending a subpoena to Twitter is not how this should be done.

But the more concerning part is that the subpoena targets the communications of 21 different Twitter accounts, and many of them claim to have no connection at all to Radack, and at least two of the accounts in the subpoena that have no known connection to Radack are connected to Nunes' lawsuits. Specifically, the subpoena seeks communications from the now famous @DevinCow account, as well as political strategist @AdamParkhomenko, who was subpoenaed in one of the Nunes' cases, and who made some news by filing quite a motion to quash in that lawsuit.

So.... what the hell are they doing in this subpoena on a totally unrelated lawsuit? As far as I can tell in going through the dockets of both cases: absolutely nothing. Perhaps there's some reason for it somewhere, but in looking through everything I can find no clear connection. Radack and Parkhomenko, for example, seemed to only start communicating after she alerted Parkhomenko to the existence of what appears to be this same subpoena on Christmas. Radack's tweet at the time went mostly unnoticed, though Adam did respond over a week later to her. As for the DevinCow account, there appears to be absolutely no obvious or public connection between Radack and DevinCow, and no reason to include that account here. Indeed, in responding to a question from myself, DevinCow told me that it has "no connection" to Radack and is "not even sure what is behind all of this craziness."

Based on that, it's extremely unclear why those two accounts (and possibly others) are included in the subpoena. And, given that the identity of DevinCow, in particular, is so important in Nunes' case, you can see how the inclusion of that account and some others may raise some eyebrows about just what is going on here. So, while many people may have misinterpreted the original Sparrow Project tweet to suggest it involved a Nunes case, the subpoena in question is technically from a totally different case, not officially involving Nunes. It's just the same lawyer for both cases. But, it should raise some serious questions as to why the (mis-targeted) subpoena in the Radack case is being used to target communications that appear unrelated to the Radack case, but potentially of significant interest to a totally different case involving the same lawyer.

Filed Under: adam parkhomenko, breach of contract, communications, defamation, devin nunes, devincow, direct messages, free speech, jesselyn radack, sca, steven biss, stored communications act, subpoenas, the sparrow project, trevor fitzgibbon
Companies: twitter

Twitter Asks Judge To Dismiss Devin Nunes' Frivolous Lawsuit Via Section 230

from the expect-nunes-to-join-the-anti-230-crowd dept

It's kind of incredible that Devin Nunes' first frivolous, censorial lawsuit is still going on -- but it is. This is the one against two satirical Twitter accounts that made fun of Nunes, as well as political strategist Liz Mair and Twitter the company itself. Twitter had tried to get the case dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, saying the case belonged in California, but that failed. Now Twitter has played the next obvious card: saying that Section 230 of the CDA prevents Nunes from suing it over the satirical accounts. Tragically, the Fresno Bee has not posted the actual legal filings, and they're in a state court that does not make them easily accessible to the public, so I don't have the full filing yet. Update: The filing is here and embedded below. However, from the Fresno Bee's account, it appears that Twitter is making a pretty typical CDA 230 argument:

“Congress granted providers of online platforms like Twitter broad immunity from claims that seek to hold them liable for harms caused by defamatory or otherwise harmful content that appeared on the provider’s platform but were created by third parties,” the motion to dismiss reads. “(The law) protects such providers not only from liability but also from being subjected to the burdens of discovery or other aspects of litigation.”

The federal law referenced specifically states that no providers of an “interactive computer service” should be treated as “the publisher or speaker” of things said by a third party on their platform.

The filing highlights that the negligence claim against Twitter is really just an attempt to route around 230:

“The sole claim (Nunes) asserts against Twitter — for negligence — rests entirely on the theory that Twitter did not prevent third parties from posting the statements on the Twitter platform and/or did not do enough to remove the statements after they were posted,” Twitter’s new motion reads.

If the judge in the case actually understands Section 230, this should be an easy dismissal for Twitter. However, to date, the judge has made a series of perplexing decisions that seem to go against most understanding on other laws. That doesn't mean he won't eventually dismiss the case, but it might make folks worry that this judge is more inclined than he should be to let the case move forward for the time being.

Of course, assuming the judge actually does dismiss the claims against Twitter on 230 grounds, I fully expect, Rep. Devin Nunes to join the chorus of clueless elected officials seeking to end Section 230.

Filed Under: devin cow, devin nunes, free speech, intermediary liability, section 230
Companies: twitter

Copyright As Censorship: Gun Rights Advocate Gets Video Taken Down With Bogus Copyright Claim

from the why-does-this-keep-happening? dept

I still laugh when I remember a copyright maximalist think tanker insisting that copyright could never be used for censorship, because "copyright holders are champions of the First Amendment" and "have no reason to censor anything." Of course, for years, we've documented over and over and over again how copyright is regularly used as a tool for censorship. And now we've got another example. And however you feel about the 2nd amendment or gun advocacy, hopefully you can agree that it's a problem for the 1st amendment when someone -- no matter what their political viewpoints -- abuses false copyright claims to take down videos they dislike.

Last week, a Twitter user posted a short 13 second video of Kaitlin Bennett, a sort of social media troll play acting as a gun rights activist/journalist (who has been reasonably criticized for questionable journalism practices), who does outrageous stunts to get more attention. In the video, Bennett first insults a woman's weight, which makes the woman reasonably angry at Bennett. Bennett responds by implying to the woman that she has a gun, and when the woman starts to calm down, Bennett suggests that her carrying a weapon was what "deterred" further escalation.

No matter what you think of the video, the user who had posted it (who was critical of Bennett) soon was informed by Twitter that a DMCA takedown notice was filed against the video, which Twitter removed:

While Twitter did eventually re-enable the video, it does show yet another example of how copyright can and is used to try to take down non-infringing works. This is why we keep raising concerns about further expansions of copyright's power to censor. When you provide any tool that enables quick censorship, it will be used for such purposes. Even if Twitter eventually relented and put the video back up, the initial suppression of speech, by use of a legal tool, is still suppression of speech.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, kaitlin bennett, takedowns
Companies: twitter

Twitter Blocks Animated PNGs After A Bunch Of Shitbirds Spend National Epilepsy Month Harassing Epileptics

from the you'll-never-go-broke-underestimating-the-quality-of-humans-on-the-internet dept

Assaulting someone with a tweet can be a criminal act. It takes a whole lot of specifics to make it a crime, but some asshole named John Rivello managed to do just that when he sent strobe gifs to Kurt Eichenwald and apparently sent him into a seizure.

Rivello did all of this under the horrible (and stupid) alias of @jew_goldstein. He also left behind a nice digital paper trial for investigators, which tied the account he used to send the strobe gifs to Eichenwald. Rivello may have used a Tracfone card to set up the accounts he used to harass Eichenwald, but these were all linked to his iPhone and his iCloud account, which helpfully included a photo of Rivello holding up his drivers license.

On top of that, investigators found a bunch of DMs to other Twitter accounts stating his intent to send Eichenwald into a seizure in hopes of killing him. So, it can be a crime to send strobe gifs to epileptics, but it takes a whole lot of work to make it a chargeable offense.

The Epilepsy Foundation is hoping law enforcement can find similar statements of intent elsewhere. During National Epilepsy Month, a bunch of people who are using far more oxygen than they deserve sent out hundreds of tweets containing strobe gifs and videos, utilizing the Foundation's Twitter handle and related hashtags. The Foundation points out that only a small percentage of epileptics are photosensitive, but any triggered seizure can carry the risk of serious injury or death.

The Foundation's post doesn't say where these complaints have been filed or provide any other details. It obviously poses some First Amendment issues in that it's asking for the prosecution of speech, but if there's enough evidence indicating some of these dirtbags were actively seeking to harm other people, First Amendment concerns will be minimal.

This brings us to another attack vector, albeit one that wasn't used in these attacks: animated PNGs. These series of images stitched together to form an animated whole would allow harassers to route around protections photosensitive epileptics used to protect themselves, like preventing autoplay of video or gif content. Twitter may not be able to do much to prevent the uploading of video and gifs containing strobe images, but it can block APNGs, which is what it is now doing.

Twitter is banning animated PNG image files (APNGs) from its platform, after an attack on the Epilepsy Foundation’s Twitter account sent out similar animated images that could potentially cause seizures in photosensitive people.

Twitter discovered a bug that allowed users to bypass its autoplay settings, and allow several animated images in a single tweet using the APNG file format.

The APNG bug has been exploited in the past, mainly to animate avatars. It apparently was not used to target epileptics during this particularly nasty exhibition of human nature, but degenerates who may have considered it a future option no longer have this exploit to work with.

No doubt someone with too much time and not enough moral fiber will find some other way to attempt to provoke seizures using nothing more than 1s and 0s, but for now, the most popular options are either closed off by built-in options or Twitter's brand new APNG blockade.

Filed Under: animated pngs, epilepsy, harassment, trolling
Companies: twitter

Losing Streak Continues For Litigants Suing Social Media Companies Over Violence Committed By Terrorists

from the twelve-straight-losses-to-open-the-season dept

According to Eric Goldman's count (and he would know), this is the 12th ridiculous "blame Twitter for terrorism" lawsuit to be tossed by a federal court. The dubious legal theory -- one so dubious it has yet to find any judicial takers -- is that Twitter and other social media platforms "allow" terrorists to converse and radicalize and do other terrorist things. What no one has successfully alleged is that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are directly or indirectly responsible for terrorist attacks.

This lawsuit was one of the dumbest. The brain geniuses at Excolo Law convinced a client this would be a winning strategy: claim the shooting of some cops by a shooter in Dallas was Twitter's fault because possibly the shooter thought terrorist group Hamas was pretty cool. 96 pages of lawsuit and this was the tenuous allegation plaintiffs Jesus Retana and Andrew Moss thought might finally prove social media companies are providing material support to terrorists.

Micah Johnson was radicalized by HAMAS’ use of social media. This was the stated goal of HAMAS. Johnson then carried out the deadly attacks in Dallas. Conducting terrorist acts in the United States via radicalized individuals is a stated goal of HAMAS.

Not only did the lawsuit fail to include anything linking Twitter to the killing of Dallas police officers, it failed to include anything linking the shooter to Hamas. That didn't stop Excolo Law from claiming that the only thing propelling the shooter to start killing Dallas police officers was Hamas' social media presence, aided and abetted by Twitter.

As Goldman points out, the court "expressly does not reach the Section 230 defense." That's not because it's not a good defense. It's because the lawsuit -- and the law firm shoveling as many of these into federal courts as possible -- is so awful.

The court opens its dismissal [PDF] by noting the string of courtroom failures Excolo Law (and 1-800-LAW-FIRM) doesn't seem to be interested in discussing when pursuing another lost cause in a federal court.

This case is the latest in a string of lawsuits that Plaintiffs’ lawyers have brought in an attempt to hold social media platforms responsible for tragic shootings and attacks across this country—by alleging that the platforms enabled international terrorist organizations to radicalize the attacks’ perpetrators. In fact, Plaintiffs’ lawyers brought a suit in the Northern District of California, Pennie v. Twitter, Inc., 281 F. Supp. 3d 874 (N.D. Cal. 2017), concerning the same Dallas shooting this Court is confronted with here, albeit with different plaintiffs. The court in that case dismissed the claims with prejudice, finding that there was no connection between the shooting and Hamas, the terrorist organization at issue. Id. at 892. Yet, Plaintiffs’ counsel made no mention of that case in their briefing; counsel discussed the case only after the Court questioned about it at oral argument.

The court then notes it can do its own research if the law firm isn't willing to discuss past work that hews super-closely to the case at hand. GTFO, says the Texas federal court.

The Court dismisses this lawsuit with prejudice. Although the complaint here alleges additional facts not found in Pennie, the complaint nonetheless suffers from many of the same deficiencies discussed in Pennie. Plaintiffs here have not and after multiple attempts, clearly cannot connect Hamas to the Dallas shooting.

Need more? No link between the cop killer and Hamas:

Simply put, the SAC does not allege any facts that show that Hamas radicalized Johnson to commit the Dallas attack, not to mention by using Defendants’ websites. Plaintiffs’ injuries,therefore, were not “by reason of” Hamas, or Defendants’ alleged support of Hamas.

No link between the claimed violation of the ATA (Anti-Terrorism Act) and the Dallas shooting, either:

Plaintiffs’ secondary liability claims fail for an additional, yet similar, reason: Plaintiffs do not allege that the Dallas shooting was an act of international terrorism.

[...]

[T]he SAC is devoid of allegations connecting Hamas to the shooting, even after it occurred. There is no transnational component to Johnson’s planning and execution of the shooting. Instead, this tragic shooting appears to be an act of domestic terrorism.

The case is dismissed with prejudice, continuing Excolo Law's losing streak. This obviously won't keep the firm from trying again, not as long as it can convince victims of violence they have a shot at extracting a large settlement from social media companies. Sure, it hasn't worked yet. But that can only mean Excolo, et al are due for a win! Right?

Filed Under: andrew moss, intermediary liability, jesus retana, material support, section 230, social media, terrorists
Companies: 1-800-lawfirm, excolo law, twitter

Apple Filed A Silly, Questionable DMCA Notice On A Tweeted iPhone Encryption Key... Before Backing Down

from the copyright? dept

Copyright continues to serve its purpose as a tool for censorship, it seems. This week there was some hubbub over Apple's highly questionable decision to send a DMCA takedown notice over a tweet by a security researcher who goes by "Siguza," and who appeared to publish an iPhone encryption key on Twitter:

Twitter took it down upon receipt of the takedown notice, but later put it back after Apple rescinded the takedown -- either realizing that the takedown was bogus or futile (or, I guess, both).

You can understand (sorta) why Apple would want to protect the key, but copyright seems like exactly the wrong tool for the job. Of course, that's often the case, but copyright is such an easy tool to abuse to try to silence speech that it is often the preferred tool of would-be censors. This is just one example. But it does raise questions. Is an encryption key even copyright-eligible? That seems highly unlikely. Copyright only is supposed to apply to the creative elements of a work, and it would be difficult to argue that an encryption key meets the "creative" level necessary. US courts have already decided that phone numbers are not subject to copyright (even made up numbers), so it seems unlikely that an encryption key would pass muster for getting a copyright.

Potentially Apple could have been making a DMCA 1201 "anti-circumvention" argument as well -- but even that seems silly, and only highlights the problems of the anti-circumvention provisions of Section 1201 of the DMCA. When a single tweet with a single code is seen as "circumvention" then there's a big problem -- and that problem is the law.

It's good that Apple backed down on this, though it still highlights the problems of the DMCA takedown process, and how it can be used unfairly for censorship -- even if that "censorship" completely backfired this time.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, encryption key, jailbreaking, research, security, siguza
Companies: apple, twitter