WikiLeaks Threatens To Publish Twitter Users' Personal Info (usatoday.com)

WikiLeaks said on Twitter earlier today that it wants to publish the private information of hundreds of thousands of verified Twitter users. The group said an online database would include such sensitive details as family relationships and finances. USA Today reports: "We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts [and] their family/job/financial/housing relationships," the WikiLeaks Task Force account tweeted Friday. The account then tweeted: "We are looking for clear discrete (father/shareholding/party membership) variables that can be put into our AI software. Other suggestions?" Wikileaks told journalist Kevin Collier on Twitter that the organization wants to "develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs." Twitter bans the use of Twitter data for "surveillance purposes." In a statement, Twitter said: "Posting another person's private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter rules." Twitter declined to say how many of its users have verified accounts but the Verified Twitter account which follows verified accounts currently follows 237,000. Verified accounts confirm the identity of the person tweeting by displaying a blue check mark. Twitter says it verifies an account when "it is determined to be an account of public interest." Twitter launched the feature in 2009 after celebrities complained about people impersonating them on the social media service.

Comments

Wikileaks

[MightyMartian]

Oh do please tell us, all you Wikileaks supporters, just how wonderful an organization it is, as it begins the process of trying to fuck over hundreds of thousands of people whose only crime was verifying their account.

Re:Wikileaks

[Luthair]

WikiLeaks originally looked like it could become one of the important institutions for government transparency and institutional crime, however they seemed to have ended up largely as an group looking to self-aggrandize their reputation. At this point they seem to be irrelevant, the important leaks like Snowden, Panama Papers, Swiss banking, etc. have not used them.

Re:Wikileaks

[MightyMartian]

I was a supporter when they were releasing information in a non-partisan and unbiased way. Now that they're basically a tool of the Russian government, and possibly of even worse actors, I think the time has come to write them off.

Re:Wikileaks

[helsinki92]

Personal emails are not something different when you are using your personal email address for government business!

Re:Wikileaks

[Smidge204]

Wikileaks does not wish to dox anyone. They wish to create a database of influence.

So all those rape victims and mental health patients they doxxed last August were all influential politicos?
=Smidge=

Four legs good, two legs BETTER.

[T.E.D.]

Originally, I believe the idea of Wikileaks was to have a place for people to safely and anonymously without fear of retaliation, leak information people in power didn't want publicized.

Now in the last day, Wikileaks has come out against government leaks, and anonymity, and in support of retaliation against people (eg: Doxing). In our own little real-life version of Animal Farm, it looks like we're now near the end of the story.

Or like @ElliotHiggins said on Twitter:

Feels like WikiLeaks stared into the abyss, then fell into it, befriended the monsters, and is now looking upwards with them.

It's a pretty safe bet...

[hyades1]

...that Trump and his kids will somehow escape scrutiny.

Re:Where is the burden of proof again?

[AmiMoJo]

Um... All I pointed out was that they have only seen the part of the report that was unclassified, all the evidence is in the non-public classified part that Trump has seen. Even Trump seems to be accepting that evidence, just not that it had any influence over his victory.

Clearly, since the GP hasn't seen the classified report, making the conclusions they did is not warranted.

Also, verbal abuse of whites? You are hallucinating again. Whoever you think I am, I'm not.