"We’ve confirmed that Irwin has access to user DMs as part of her position. Given the way the company has handled the Twitter Files, multiple former employees told us that DMs are no longer secure, and have discouraged us from using them for any remotely sensitive communication."
https://www.platformer.news/p/another-whistleblower-comes-for-twitter @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
Ella Irwin also explicitly directed Twitter to ban journalists like me. The fact that she has used her access to people's private messages should be a wake-up call to everyone on Twitter, especially journalists; how can you protect sources in a place like that?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/15/twitter-journalists-suspended-musk/
A useful #FeatureRequest for Mastodon would be adding a way of setting up autoreplies to private messages the same way most email systems allow vacation responses. -This way if someone sends a private message to a journalist they could have it would respond with "XXX uses Signal/Whatsapp/Whatever" for private message - please use that instead"
It could also be used as a vacation responder "I'm on vacation, don't expect timely replies until XXX" for non-journalists.
Come for the reach, stay for the fascism.
Yeah when the stress test came American journalism failed. Turns out they are as weak as the rest of us.
AGAIN? What is it with him and assassinations?! Wouldn't therapy be cheaper than this bullshit?
@drewharwell I find it very remarkable that you are still (it seems) banned from Twitter, yet the site presents your profile as live with no indication you’ve been banned.
And this still affects other reporters too, e.g Steve Hernan.
And no one is reporting on it! And all the other journalists just keep using Twitter!! Bonkers.
@peterbutler
That last part is what I find perplexing.
@drewharwell Not even a journo, but I certainly wouldn't trust them with anything highly sensitive. As always, tools like Signal exist for such purposes. That said, we still have laws.
If Twitter misappropriates people's private DMs (a violation of ECPA/SCA, its Privacy Policy, and likely a bunch of other laws), it should be sued into oblivion in a class action by all whose DMs are stolen, and the evidence handed over to FTC for (yet more) sanctions for (yet another) breach of user privacy.
@drewharwell DMs were never secure. The only way DMs could have been secure is if they’d been end-to-end encrypted. They were always insecure but some folks were fine with who had access to them.
It’s similar to building a surveillance state under Obama and then freaking out when Trump gets access to it. Perhaps we have to start thinking about not building such things or accepting them to begin with even if it’s our friends who are running them at the time.
@aral @drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer I have educated Swedish reporters on digital source protection for many years, and have repeated this over and over again.
And yet, even in 2023, I see reporters using Twitter (and other social media services) to find sources, offering source protection but no other contact way than DMs.
And this is not about Twitter. This is about understanding tools and choosing the right one.
@anders @drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer A magazine once asked a bunch of us to literally say “I told you so” about surveillance-based tech (or “people farming” as I call it). I told them I’d only do it if I could point out their own hyprocrisy as a company reliant on adtech. The result:
(I can’t believe that was five years ago.)
We should have known that Facebook was abusing our data. Why? Because lots of privacy activists told us so. Since most of them are too good of a human to rub that in our nose, we went ahead and forced them to accept our spoonfed quote. Hope
@aral @anders @drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
it's way worse than just direct messages
if you're doing any comms or organizing for antifascist causes, assume your identity is leaked to fascists
assume your email, your phone number, your ip addresses are already doxxed
and it doesn't help to start using a vpn now, because twitter has your history from when you didn't use a vpn
you'd need to create a new account using the vpn, and only disclose phone number and email that aren't linked to you, and only access twitter from the vpn
pre-elmo twitter had a good reputation for defending anon users from fascists, but that's all over now
@ares Oh yeah, Twitter’s gone full fascist. I used to call Elon Musk “proto-fascist” (as in “proto-fascist billionaire man-baby”) but I’ve dropped the “proto” recently.
(My point was more on the slippery slope of neoliberalism / surveillance capitalism that builds the infrastructure for fascism. All the fascists have to do then is to move in.)
@aral @drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
I was always somewhat amused when people were discussing Mastodon DMs weren't secure a few months/weeks ago, but apparently didn't realize DMs on other platforms weren't necessarily secure either.
@drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer nobody wants to assassinate him lol
He just things he's way more important than he is
@drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
No longer?
Never DM anything you would not printed on the front page of the local newspaper.
@drewharwell
@caseynewton @zoeschiffer
Twitter DMs were never secure.
@drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
I really do hope that someone at Twitter is bright enough to recognize that there are many info issues that are not classified, but still create liability due to eg PII/PHI, privileged or otherwise confidential information, and plenty of other situations where the law does not, in fact, treat IP and comms as "finders keepers".
Also, there are minor PR issues like the risk of an employee using that info to stalk people.
@drewharwell @caseynewton @zoeschiffer
Did anyone used to think that they were private? Semi-private, sure, but surely not secret.
Drew Harwell
Ajaj Alawneh 
Unixorn
Dawn Tåke 🏳️⚧️
Normal Guy
aardvark
Fyzzlefry
Bud Gibson
KanaMauna
n0body
John Gordon
Old Man Mike
Robert Denby
Ryan Fisher
Jeff
Sirpushalot
Peter Butler
john r red-horse
JR 🏳️🌈
Caledonia 🏴
Deji
Bethany
eventoedungulate
Antone Johnson
Tim Kellogg
Costantino Pistagna
Sebastian
JD
The DJ Mr P
Aral Balkan
loums
Dieu
Anders Thoresson
ares
lightspeed
Julia
Landa 
hammancheez
Domenick
joeziehmer
Lonewolf
Ben Crowell
Prosaic
Bart Veldhuizen 🚀
newsorpigal
Noah Cook
nkp
Renee DiResta
Bruce
Brad Ackerman
Tengrain