The Mistakes The Government Made In Trying To Get Info From Twitter
from the not-this-again dept
Over the last month or so, we spent a lot of time going over the huge number of mistakes that the US government made in seizing a variety of domain names, supposedly for copyright infringement. Now, with the government seeking all sorts of info to build their legal case against Julian Assange and Wikileaks, it's time to look at the mistakes the government is making there as well. Following up on the news that came out late last week of the government seeking info from Twitter, Christopher Soghoian has done a nice job highlighting some of the details and problems with the court order, some of which seem reminiscent of the problems with the domain seizures -- meaning technical and legal errors, and a filing prepared by a rather surprisingly inexperienced government representative.
The 2703(d) order misspelled the names of one of the targets, Rop Gonggrijp. It also requested credit card and bank account numbers of several Twitter users, even though Twitter is a free service and so doesn't have such information (presumably someone at DOJ knows a little about Twitter, since the agency has 350,000 followers of its official Twitter account).He also notes that the government must realize that three of the individuals named are computer security experts who probably used pretty strong encryption, so it's unlikely this info will turn up much. Soghoian also points out the oddity of using this process to try to get info, as it would seem that there are much more reasonable ways that the government could request and get the same info.The Department of Justice prosecutor named in the order, Tracy Doherty-McCormick, was prosecuting online child exploitation cases just five months before the Twitter order was issued. Given that the wikileaks investigation is the most high-profile national security investigation of the decade, and that the court order seeks records associated with an Icelandic member of parliament, you would think that DOJ would assign this case to someone more senior.
I do wonder how much of these errors and sloppiness are due to basic rushing to try to get stuff done, or due to incompetence. Perhaps the government knows that it will get these kinds of things approved almost no matter what, so it doesn't even try. That might be the scariest scenario of all.
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Anonymous Coward, Jan 10th, 2011 @ 9:48am
Credit card information all depends. Did any of these people pay twitter to have a "sponsored" hot topic? Twitter does actually sell things, you know?
As for the "someone more senior", that is sort of misleading. Someone who has reached that level of work should be able to do the work without issue. This isn't rocket science. Oh and yes, many of use misspell Icelandic names. You might also misspell the name Reykjanesbær,one of the largest cities / towns in the country.
In the end, all the protesting makes me think they have something to hide. Grand supporters of transparency shouldn't be upset when people want them to be just as transparent.
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iceland is cool ...
Hephaestus (profile), Jan 10th, 2011 @ 9:57am
The cool thing about this is that the US governmnet is requesting information on a member of the Icelandic parliament. Did they do any research what so ever into who they were targeting? This makes them seem very incompetent and will more than likely backfire on the DOJ in a huge way.
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John Duncan Yoyo, Jan 10th, 2011 @ 10:02am
When the choice is between malice and incompetence I would vote for incompetence 90% of the time.
The DOJ seems to be on the way to screwing up enough to make this case as un-prosecutable as the prisoners are in Gitmo.
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Re:
"Grand supporters of transparency shouldn't be upset when people want them to be just as transparent."
Supporters of transparency in government, Supporters of privacy for individuals, and supporter of an individuals freedom. Your comment on transparency doesn't hold water.
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Anonymous Coward, Jan 10th, 2011 @ 10:10am
Any sufficiently advanced act of stupidity is indistinguishable from any act of malice.
(At least, in terms of the damage it can cause, hence the concern)
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Re: Re:
Umm, she is a government member, and potentially these people were doing work for the government.
Welcome to transparency city, those who cry the most should be the first to be open, not the first to hire lawyers.
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ChimpBush McHitlerBurton, Jan 10th, 2011 @ 10:15am
"Oh and yes, many of use misspell Icelandic names."
...Hell, some of us even misspell "us".I know what you're sayin' man...
CBMHB
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Re: Re:
Two thumbs up.
CBMHB
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Re: Re: Re:
Thats actually a fail logically. She was working for wikileaks as a private citizen not as member of the icelandic government. There is a distinction.
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Anonymous Coward, Jan 10th, 2011 @ 10:19am
This transparency thing may work if one side isn't grandstanding and threatening to kill the other.
(e.g. Elected US officials calling for the death-penalty for individuals associated with the Wikileaks affair.)
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Re: Re:
Dude nice rework of clarkes law!!!!
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Re: Re: Re:
"...those who cry the most should be the first to be open..."
The government goes first. Full disclosure, no exceptions! Until they do that, they can demand nothing.
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1/10/2011
The Mistakes The Government Made In Trying To Get Info From Twitter | Techdirt
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