It is just such utter bullshit. "fight on terrorism". This is why I just don't do political news. No one reports on "huh fight on terrorism you say, can we shine some light on this claim? How useful has Twitter been to home security...". Why isn't that the story?<p>I keep seeing stories build on just bullshit. The BBC will say "And what about housing Mrs May" and she will say "My government has created a white paper...... and councils are pissed about planning permission....."<p>There is no answer. Over and over and over again. There is no point in the BBC reporter existing, no point in anyone's time being wasted. Just report nothing.<p>Giving Governments access to public data has totally changed the dynamics of politics and the public is losing everything as a result.<p>Government just fabricates an internal memo leak, waits 12 hours to get some data back on public opinion and then depending on that, will deny it, or will go ahead.<p>Time and time again you see this. Our old Chancellor had no experience with finance, and during his term, it was found that he had dodged tax.... the day after he had given a statement that he was serious about tax evasion. Then, something about an old Veteran having cake was the main story that day across the whole media board. Forgotten.<p>David Cameron said one evening after a COBRA meeting "Lets send dogs, and fences to Calais to stop the swarm of immigrants" - That got bad data results, so by 6am the next morning he adapted it to "We will take 10000 and send aid". By 9am, it was all forgotten.<p>What is happening?? Where is reality?? Is no one responsible for anything any more?? Is this a result of the fragmentation of media outlets?? Like, I grew up with 4 channels. Now I don't want TV. Therefor there is no cross reference at all. You can say what you want and like 10% of the populace will hear it. That means government has never had it so easy.
Ah yes, I'm sure terrorists are planning things on Twitter in public tweets and replies.<p>You know who <i>actually</i> publicly uses Twitter?<p>Political activists.
Good thing the UK is not a partner of the US in intelligence sharing which just has to send a NSL to Twitter and get access to all the data they have.
/s<p>If you use an online service, you should just assume that whatever the company can access, the country the service is based in and their intelligence partners can also access.
This is a bit of puffy PR coup for twitter, right? It can crow about protecting users' privacy from government surveillance while continuing to allow (naturally well-intentioned) companies to pay for the very same access.
<i>The spokesman also called for social media companies to play a role in the government’s fight against terrorism.</i><p>Indeed. That role is to tell the government to GFTS until they have a warrant in hand.