I'm definitely interested in how they justify this in comparison to Wikileaks. BlueLeaks certainly had sensitive information about victims and others that are innocent, but the line hasn't been officially drawn there by a statement or ToS policy. I don't see a Twitter statement in the future.
I wonder how much of this has to do with the stripping-away of Section 230 protections that was started/attempted recently. A bit more paranoid response to published content that could create legal issues for Twitter now.
> The group’s account, @DDoSecrets, was permanently suspended, a Twitter spokesperson told Gizmodo, citing the company’s policy against the distribution of hacked materials. The policy specifically prohibits accounts from sharing “content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”
I did actually see that, on second thought I worded my OP in a way that sounded like they didn't comment at all, when I was referring to if they would compare it to how they handled Wikileaks in their response.
So I guess trade secrets are not in these leaks, but private information is certainly what Wikileaks is about. I think that the information of innocent people is more than enough reason not to host it, though. Just figured they'd want to clear the air of any accusations of favoritism.
Yet another tiny cut demonstrating how centralized platforms are intrinsically unsustainable for freedom. How many people will this further discourage from referring to the primary source for themselves? Instead of a democratic in-touch society where everyone is one step away from the files, we get pre-digested articles that vaguely refer to the primary source as if it's some kind of hot potato instead of simply including a link.
Censorship always seems appealing for protecting sympathetic individuals, especially at its start when the cases are inherently worthy. But after the ruling power structure learns which levers to pull, censorship is inevitably used to protect and perpetuate the status quo at scale. This tragic arc was foreseeable over a decade ago when this trend of webcrapps was gaining popularity. Giving one entity power over the communications of hundreds of millions of users is an inevitable target for authoritarian control, and too concentrated to resist. But nobody wanted to listen, and now we're living the results.
The fact Twitter is a private platform places this outside the "Free Speech" debate as it's usually understood. That's the whole point: Twitter, as a private platform, can self-censor expression by destroying your expression without owing you or anyone else even a figleaf justification. Any centralized platform can do that, and will, with sufficient provocation, or no provocation at all.
Unfortunately however, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. So we can say they're private and they can suppress speech because of that, but it doesn't remove the observation of how much impact that has on the public.
In our society censorship doesn't occur by blunt order, but rather follows some justifying narrative. Based on the reporting I've read, I'm guessing these "innocent people" are police officers who should already be subject to extreme transparency by virtue of their position. Any specific standard starts off being used to punch up to harassers and the like, but then gets internalized by the status quo and used to routinely punch down.
No way to tell without looking at the source material though, which is the entire problem. Guess it's time to track down the torrent.
Once again, we're leaning on speculation to fill in details that are missing.
Checking out https://www.reddit.com/r/blueleaks/ , the examples I'm seeing are subpoenaed records from Google etc. Those people have already had their privacy severely violated by the police and commercial surveillance industry, so it's a bit ridiculous to say their privacy is now an overriding concern when it comes to transparency.
That subreddit does have some great tidbits and discussion, but is of course at risk of getting destroyed per the same whitewashing policies as Twitter. We can only cross our fingers that it continues to exist, because we lack appropriate tools to make sure it does.
Do you seriously consider ownership of victim data being in the hands of the police you give it to as anywhere near posting it online? That's also included in this leak, whether or not subpoenaed information is included as well. That information is much better off on some data center somewhere than on the Twitter and torrents everywhere.
Even the part about not having tools is wrong, people are already seeding torrents for this information and IPFS exists.
I was referring to the type of suspect data I saw on the subreddit. Given the top-level names in the repacked torrent from that subreddit, I'm not convinced there is much victim data in here. It seems to be focused on fusion with federal agencies, which would tend away from everyday police reports. But once again we're arguing over hearsay, instead of directly referencing the primary material. What is your source for there being much victim data, apart from innuendos by journalists who also haven't had much time to comb through?
Also at this point, the data being out there is a done deal. So shutting down links and discussion is mainly shutting down analysis in discussion in more open spheres, rather than actually preventing bad actors.
My point about not having the tools is specifically about the subreddit discussion. If that grows, only to be chopped down later, it will be a net loss. Is there a better forum in which public analysis is happening, on IPFS or the like?
