Mike Masnick ✅Jan 5, 2023
So, a "PR" person, who was given some files she does not understand by an ex-twitter employee and has been "revealing" them (misleadingly) is now freaking out that that someone from the State Dept visited her public website, claiming that the gov't is trying to intimidate her. By... visiting her public website after she claimed to be releasing things. And she's asking Elon why it's happening. It's very, very silly and confused people all around.
Show threadPhil Gastwirth Jan 5, 2023
@mmasnick
Is that even a normal looking report? Wouldn't it show an ip visited her site? I'm not super familiar with website visit reporting
Show threadChris GlassJan 5, 2023
@PhilGastwirth @mmasnick It's doing a reverse DNS lookup to see where the computer was that visited the site. She's stupid.
Show thread2xfoJan 5, 2023
@TheChrisGlass @PhilGastwirth @mmasnick
Are they confused, or are they projecting confusion to confuse others? Lying has a social function
Show threadChris GlassJan 5, 2023

@RnDanger @PhilGastwirth @mmasnick She's a paranoid moron that turned on 'security features' she doesn't understand. Interestingly none of the quote tweets or replies are even attempting to explain what it means.

It literally means someone on a computer at that company accessed the website. That's literally it.

I just ran it on my domain. Oh no! THE GERMANS ARE SPYING ON ME BY ACCESSING MY WEBSITE!

Show threadPhil Gastwirth 
@TheChrisGlass
No I understand it saying a map location or ip address. But I'm just surprised it flat out says "state department". I mean I guess that ip or dns could be publically known.
@RnDanger @mmasnick
Jan 5, 2023 at 8:04pmWeb
Show threadChris GlassJan 5, 2023

@PhilGastwirth @RnDanger @mmasnick Yup. All that IP stuff is publicly available. Granted, you can obscure it with a VPN, but it's something 99.999% of people should never care about.

And it's disappointing someone that's head of PR, or whatever her title is, is just pushing dangerous lies without any pushback.

Show threadPhil Gastwirth Jan 5, 2023
@TheChrisGlass
Well yeah of course she is. I guess I would think government ip would be obscured
@RnDanger @mmasnick
Show threaddragonfrogJan 5, 2023
@PhilGastwirth @TheChrisGlass @RnDanger @mmasnick As an IT person in the public sector: we don't do sneaky spy stuff. We don't want to give the impression we do sneaky spy stuff. And if we have a computer on our network with a virus on it we haven't detected, we want to be able to receive notifications from outside parties that have detected activity from our IP addresses. All that requires not obscuring IP addresses.
Show threadAsher LangtonJan 5, 2023
@PhilGastwirth @TheChrisGlass @RnDanger @mmasnick IP allocations are public. https://ipinfo.io/AS6966
AS6966 U.S. Department of State details - IPinfo.io

AS6966 autonomous system information: WHOIS details, hosted domains, peers, upstreams, downstreams, and more