WikiLeaks threatens to build a database of verified Twitter users
Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, will perhaps be remembered as the day WikiLeaks stopped even pretending to be an organization dedicated to governmental transparency.
After tweeting against government leaks, the organization floated the idea of building a database of information about verified Twitter users.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump trusts WikiLeaks more than the CIA or FBI
The theoretical database would include information about the families, jobs, finances and housing of anyone with a blue check next to their name. And, while it's not clear exactly how such a database would be published, it seems that an "online database" would be available to anyone with an internet connection, which is also known as doxing.
We are thinking of making an online database with all "verified" twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships.
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017
WikiLeaks later said the idea is to "develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs," denying it is a doxing attempt.
.@kevincollier No it is to develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017
But it's pretty easy to see how WikiLeaks, should it collect such information, could leverage it as a threat against anyone it wanted.
People noticed.
[ 2013 ]
NSA: We made a database of everyone.
Wikileaks: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
[ 2017 ]
Wikileaks: We're gonna make a database of everyone.— Graham Spookyland (Polynomial^DSS) 🎃 (@gsuberland) January 6, 2017
WIKILEAKS: "We need to transparency to avoid 1984! And to achieve that goal, we are making a database of everyone's intimate details."
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) January 6, 2017
If Wikileaks still has a Twitter account this time tomorrow, then @jack & @support are complicit in any doxing database of verified users.
— Ian Rose (@ianrosewrites) January 6, 2017
Twitter didn't respond directly, but it's hard to take the tweet below as anything but a response to WikiLeaks' earlier idea.
Posting another person’s private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter Rules: https://t.co/NGx5hh2tTQ
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 6, 2017
Whether they'd ban WikiLeaks, however, is another question.
Welcome to 2017, everyone.
