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Alex Jones and Infowars Twitter account permanently ban

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“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” Twitter said. “We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ previous violations.” 

The company added it will continue to hunt for “other accounts potentially associated” with Alex Jones to prevent any attempts to circumvent the ban.

“I was taken down not because we lie but because we tell the truth and because we were popular, and because we dared to go to that committee hearing and stand up to Rubio, stand up to the lies of mainstream media and speak the truth,” Jones stated following his suspension.

And then we ran into Oliver Darcy who is the secret police captain, who admits he goes around and gets people like Infowars taken off other platforms because we confronted that monster that has abused us and lied about us,” Jones said about the encounter that reportedly got him banned.

Prior to his suspension, the commentator had about 900,000 followers on Twitter, while his Infowars account was popular with roughly 430,000 users. Calling the ban an act of “war” against conservative voices, Jones urged his supporters to resist “the full-on assault on this country.”

“This signifies that gloves are off, they are trying to destroy our basic birthright of the First Amendment,” Jones added. “The political establishment does not like Democrats or Republicans being challenged and they want to go out after the president… They are panicking, they are scared. They are making a move against all of us.”

Twitter banned Jones from its platforms a day after the company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, testified before Congress where he insisted Twitter was impartial and denied any political bias against conservatives.

On the sidelines of Wednesday’s hearings, in which Facebook and Twitter participated, Jones could not contain his rage over the subject and clashed with Sen. Marco Rubio over the political censorship by the Silicon Valley giants. He later confronted CNN journalist Oliver Darcy in a Capitol Hill hallway, and recorded himself aggressively heckling his ‘biased’ reporting and attacking his appearance.

Source: RT

Germany: Spiegel editor’s Klaus Brinkbäumer Twitter account hacked to post pro-Turkey message

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The Twitter account of Spiegel editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbäumer has been hacked and used to apologize for bad news published about Turkey. The magazine has published extensively on Turkey and its relations with Germany.

The Twitter account of Klaus Brinkbäumer, editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine, was hacked late on Saturday and used to post a pro-Turkey message.

Hackers posted a picture of the Turkish president and flag alongside a message in Turkish and German: “We would like to apologize for the bad news that we have reported and published up till now about Turkey and [President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

Soon after, Spiegel issued a tweet of its own to explain what had happened, saying that Brinkbäumer’s “most recent tweet about Erdogan and the header are not from him. We’re taking care of it.”

The pinned tweet was removed after about two hours. It was unclear who was behind the attack.

Critical reporting

Spiegel has carried many articles on Turkey, in print and on both its German and English websites.

In September, it reported on an espionage trial in Hamburg which raised questions about the Turkish government’s intelligence activities in Germany. “Ankara may even be trying to eliminate its political opponents,” Spiegel noted at the time.

The news site has also reported on the case of Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel, who has been held in pre-trial detention in Turkey on terror charges since last February.

Pro-Erdogan supporters hack Twitter accounts

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Supporters of Turkish President Erdogan have posted messages on several high-profile Twitter accounts. The hackees include Borussia Dortmund, ex-tennis star Boris Becker, broadcaster ProSieben and Amnesty International.

The hackers posted early on Wednesday morning using the hashtags nazialmanya (Nazi Germany) and Nazihollanda (Nazi Netherlands), a swastika symbol and the sentence “See you on April 16.”

This is date of a referendum that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes will give him enhanced constitutional powers.

Read: Diplomatic row between Europe and Turkey escalates further

“We are aware of an issue affecting a number of account holders this morning,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

Hackers targeted several accounts with a large amount of followers. Among the victims were Amnesty International, the football club Borussia Dortmund and tennis legend Boris Becker.

Most of the posts have since been taken down.

Rising tensions

Some 3 million Turks live in Germany, a large number of whom are eligible to vote in the referendum. Turkish officials have been seeking to campaign in both Germany and Holland in recent weeks and have been largely blocked from doing so.

This in turn has raised tensions as the Netherlands goes to the polls and also adds grist to Erdogan’s mill that the EU is seeking to undermine his rule in Turkey.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, warned on Wednesday that the German government reserves the right to impose entry bans on Turkish officials hoping to campaign in Germany, though he said the measure would be a “last resort.”

This follows days of escalating tensions between Turkey and two EU nations, Germany and the Netherlands, over Turkish politicians’ hopes to campaign there ahead of their country’s referendum.

Erdogan has accused Germany of “Nazi practices” and recently labeled the Netherlands as “Nazi remnants” after it prevented two Turkish ministers from holding campaign rallies.

jbh/rt (dpa, AP)

For First Time, A U.S. Court Serves a Lawsuit by Tweet

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twitter-lawsuitBy Nicholas Iovino, Courthouse News Service

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – In what may be a first for U.S. courts, a federal judge has authorized serving a foreign national with a lawsuit via Twitter.

In June, a California nonprofit sued two Middle Eastern banks and a Kuwaiti sheikh for allegedly funding a Christian genocide in Iraq and Syria.

St. Francis of Assisi, an Alameda-based nonprofit that assists refugees, told the court in August that it had trouble serving one of the defendants – Kuwaiti born Sunni cleric Hajjaj al-Ajmi.

Al-Ajmi, who was blacklisted as a financer of terror by the United States and United Nations, has organized Twitter campaigns to help fund the Islamic State’s systematic murder and displacement of Assyrian Christians, according to the lawsuit.

Because Kuwait is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, St. Francis could not serve al-Ajmi through a centralized authority as it can in other nations that are parties to the convention.

In a Sept. 30 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler granted the plaintiff’s request to use an alternative method to serve al-Ajmi with the suit: Twitter.

“The court grants St. Francis’s request because service via Twitter is reasonably calculated to give notice and is not prohibited by international agreement,” Beeler wrote in her 4-page ruling.

St. Francis attorney Mogeeb Weiss, of Alameda, said he believes this is the first time a federal court has authorized serving a lawsuit by tweet.

“The plaintiff is setting up the mechanism for putting notices on the defendant’s Twitter,” Weiss said. “We will tweet it at them with a link where the summons and complaint can be obtained.”

Finding al-Ajmi’s current Twitter handle could prove challenging because many of his previous accounts have been disabled by the social media platform.

Still, St. Francis insisted in its request for an alternative method of service that al-Ajmi remains active on Twitter.

In her ruling, Beeler cited prior cases in which federal courts have approved serving foreign nationals with lawsuits via Facebook and other social media platforms.

In 2014, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia authorized serving a Turkish defendant with a lawsuit through email, Facebook and LinkedIn in the case WhosHere Inc. v. Gokham Oran, according to Beeler’s ruling.

The judge also cited another case – Federal Trade Commission v. PCCCare Inc. – in which a Southern District of New York judge approved serving a defendant business in India with a lawsuit through Facebook.

“As in WhosHere and PCCare, service by the social-media platform Twitter is reasonably calculated to give notice to and is the ‘method of service most likely to reach’ al-Ajmi,” Beeler wrote.

 

Weiss said he expects his client to tweet the lawsuit to al-Ajmi sometime next week.

Source: http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/for-first-time-a-us-court-serves-a-lawsuit-by-tweet-161007?news=859573

Turkish ministers accuse Twitter of plotting against Erdoğan

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AA photo

AA photo

(.hurriyetdailynews) Senior government officials have slammed Twitter, claiming it “censored” a hashtag created for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by removing #WeLoveErdogan from its top trending tweets.

“I’m asking Twitter officials: Who instructed you to remove the #WeLoveErdogan hashtag? Was it a country, a person, a terrorist organization, or someone else?” Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ told reporters on March 30.

“I’m just curious: Is using the message ‘We love Erdoğan’ against Twitter’s principles? Why would a message expressing people’s love bother Twitter?” he added.

“I am of the opinion that this is one part of a global operation conducted against our president,” Bozdağ also said.

Supporters of President Erdoğan have created a viral Twitter hashtag #WeLoveErdogan to rally around the Turkish leader as he makes a highly sensitive visit to the United States at a time when he faces growing criticism over freedom of expression.

“Our president Mr @RT_Erdogan was greeted with great enthusiasm by US citizens and our compatriots,” tweeted Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who is accompanying Erdoğan on his visit to Washington, adding the hashtag “#WeLoveErdogan.”

Other users posted pictures of Erdoğan kissing children or famous moments from his career and life, including scoring a goal with a canny chip in a televised 2014 exhibition football match.

Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Mehmet Babaoğlu posted a picture of Erdoğan’s 2009 walk-out from the World Economic Forum in Davos after a row with then Israeli President Shimon Peres.
“That’s why #WeLoveErdogan,” he said.

But the campaign hit immediate controversy with Erdogan supporters accusing Twitter of censorship by deliberately removing the hashtag from its top trending tweets.

Ankara mayor accuses Gülen group

In an extraordinary broadside of over 40 tweets posted on his Turkish and English accounts, Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek said Twitter had deliberately taken it down.

“This hashtag #WeLoveErdogan got TT ranking worldwide … But then it was censored unbelievably,” said Gökçek, accusing supporters of Erdoğan’s friend-turned-foe, the U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, of being behind its removal.

However, other users expressed skepticism, suggesting that rather than censoring the hashtag Twitter may have removed it for being generated by fake accounts and automated bots, or simply as a normal outcome of its complex algorithm for determining top trends.

There was no immediate comment from the social network.

The Twitter campaign comes as Erdoğan visits the United States amid signs that U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to keep his distance from the Turkish leader.

Foreign criticism is also multiplying over the issue of freedom of expression and freedom of the media. In the latest row, Turkey summoned the German ambassador in Ankara to demand that Germany take down a satirical TV song lampooning Erdoğan.

Until last year, Erdoğan was seen as hostile to Twitter, boasting that he does not “tweet or schmeet” and overseeing blockages of social networks.

But in 2015 he sent his first tweet from his own account @RT_Erdogan and now regularly uses Twitter.

Turkey blocks Facebook, Twitter following deadly Ankara blast – reports

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56e5d496c3618899628b45cfTurkish authorities banned Twitter and Facebook after images spread on social media depicting the suicide car bombing that killed and injured dozens in the Turkish capital of Ankara, local broadcasters reported.

Turkey’s telecommunications authority, TIB, blocked access to social media after a court-ordered ban was imposed, Turkish NTV and CNN Turk reported.

Access to Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other sites has been blocked because images showing victims of the tragedy were being shared on those platforms, according to the court.

Twitter files lawsuit against Turkish fine over ‘terrorist propaganda’

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REUTERS / ISTANBUL

REUTERS / ISTANBUL

Micro-blogging site Twitter filed a lawsuit in an Ankara court on Thursday, seeking to annul a fine by the Turkish authorities for not removing content Turkey says is “terrorist propaganda,” a source familiar with the case told Reuters.

A Turkish official said much of the material in question was related to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which Ankara deems as a terrorist organization.

A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed the company has taken legal action over the fine without providing further details.

Ankara has taken a tough stance on social media under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) he founded. It has temporarily banned access to Twitter site several times in the past for failing to comply with requests to remove content.

But the 150,000 lira ($50,000) fine, imposed by the BTK communications technologies authority, was the first of its kind by Turkish authorities on Twitter.

Twitter, in its lawsuit, is arguing that the fine is against the law and should be annulled, the source said.

The content Turkish authorities have asked to be removed includes tweets in relation to the PKK, which is also considered a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States, a Turkish official said. Some tweets are related to the far-left DHKP-C.

“We have shown 15-20 tweets from several accounts to Twitter as examples. We have imposed the fine because Twitter failed to comply with the court order,” this official said.

Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım said on Wednesday that Turkey would not give up on its demand for Twitter to pay the fine.

The government has also introduced legislation making it easier for such bans to be imposed. Turkey is among the top countries with the highest number of content-removal requests to Twitter, data from US-based company shows.

‘You’re a virus, we’re the cure’: Anonymous takes down 20,000 ISIS Twitter accounts

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564ec914c361886b028b45e6The international hacking group Anonymous claims to have taken down 20,000 Islamic State-linked Twitter accounts as it wages “total war” against the terrorist organization. Their #OpParis operation is in revenge for the deadly attacks on November 13.

While Russia, French and US bombers are targeting Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) positions from the sky, Anonymous are carrying out their very own devastating campaign against the terrorist organization. They are using computer code rather than high-powered weapons and say the hacktivist group has built tools that “might be better than any world government’s tools to combat ISIS online.”

In a YouTube post on Wednesday, the group said: “More than 20,000 Twitter accounts belonging to ISIS were taken down by Anonymous.” It added that they had provided a list of all the accounts that have been taken down. On Tuesday, the group had removed 5,500 ISIS accounts from the internet.

The video starts with a spokesman, all dressed in black and wearing Anonymous’ signature Guy Fawkes mask, delivering a statement.

“Hello, citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. It is time to realize that social media is a solid platform for ISIS’s communication as well as neutering their ideas of terror amongst youth. But at the same time, social media has proved it is an advanced weapon. We must all work together and use social media to eliminate the accounts used by terrorists,” the spokesman said.

The jihadist ISIS organization has used social media as an effective way to recruit new fighters, especially from the West.

“ISIS, we will hunt you and take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you. From now on, there is no safe place for you online. You will be treated like a virus and we are the cure,” the spokesman said.

On Tuesday, Alex Poucher, an Anonymous representative, spoke to RT about how the hacking collective is engaging in “total war” against IS.

https://youtu.be/ZfyVVLGWivo

“Our capability to take down ISIS is a direct result of our collective’s sophisticated hackers, data miners, and spies that we have all around the world. We have people very, very close to ISIS on the ground, which makes gathering intel about ISIS and related activities very easy for us,” he said.

Poucher added that the collective has built tools that “might be better than any world government’s tools to combat ISIS online.”

“They picked a fight with Anonymous when they attacked Paris, and now they should expect us,” he said, adding that the collective “will not sit by and watch these terror attacks unfold around the world.”

You’ve Got Mail: Snowden Gets 47 Gigs Worth’ of Twitter Notification Emails

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whistleblower Edward Snowden

whistleblower Edward Snowden

Recently, the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden joined Twitter, and that good deed has too not gone unpunished. Although this time he just got 47Gb of notifications instead of international persecution.

Every time anyone retweeted, favorite or followed, Edward Snowden got an email about it. Here are the numbers: he has over 1.2 million followers, over 200,000 retweets and over 260,000 favorites.

snodonThat is an impressive following for anyone, especially for someone who’s only been on Twitter for four days and tweeted 14 times, but heavy hangs the crown-wearing email account.

While Turkey blocks Kurdish websites, as Twitter and Facebook “Will Barazani Block Oil to Turkey”?

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Erdogan-block-twitterAs Turkish fighter jets bombed the  Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, Turkey blocked number of Kurdish news websites and many users had difficulty in accessing Twitter and Facebook for an unspecified reason.

The decision imposed early July 25 by Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), a government-controlled Internet watchdog, targeted news websites based not only in Turkey, but also in northern Iraq.

Blocked websites include Rudaw, BasNews, DİHA, ANHA, Özgür Gündem newspaper, Yüksekova Haber, Sendika.org and RojNews. When trying to access one of the websites, a user from Turkey can only see a message that the TİB blocked it as an “administrative measure.”