Panic in Tweeterville

Our nation's tweeters dodged a bullet today, although if you have a job or a family life, you might not have noticed. Fortunately, the WaPo's Social Media reporter, Rob Pegoraro, was on top of the situation: Twitter briefly zeroes out 'follow' counts to fix a bug:

Twitter users might have felt a little devalued earlier this afternoon when their "following" and "follower" counts mysteriously reset to zero. As the latter number is the primary way people on the popular status-update-sharing site keep score -- it indicates how many other Twitter users see your updates when they log on -- seeing that vanish could have been distressing. (The former number indicates how many other people's updates you follow, and most people pay far less attention to it.)

The root cause of the hiccup was the discovery by some sneaky users of the San Francisco-based site of an old bug that let them force other users to follow them. That could allow for a fair amount of mischief, so Twitter management shut off its follow functions to close that vulnerability and posted a brief note on the site's status blog to that effect:

"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to "force" other users to follow them. We're now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we're aware and this too should shortly be resolved."

Within an hour or so, the site was back to normal.

Considering how rapidly Twitter has grown from its start-up roots, I'm somewhat surprised that this sort of glitch hasn't happened earlier or more often. And I'm relieved to see the site recover so quickly; things could have been a whole lot uglier in Twitterville.

It looks like Americans came together and supported each other in this very brief time of crisis. The following comments on the Twitter debugging story were posted to the WaPo's web site tonight:

I'm so relieved our nation made it through this terrible tragedy.

First the earthquake in Haiti and now this. Bad things comes in threes, so who knows what could be next?

Well done. I have never been prouder of my fellow Netizens.

Beware Tweets "of a Menacing Nature"

I've been browsing Twitter almost every day for the last few weeks, as I make up my mind about doing a Super Awesome Jared Parody Contest, and while I've often been appalled by tweets I have never felt menaced by one. Which makes me shake my head at today's news from Britain.

A British man has been convicted of the crime of tweeting with intent to menace after he sent off an intemperate Twitter message expressing frustration with an airport delay. From Briton Convicted for ‘Menacing’ Tweet Against Robin Hood Airport:

A British man who was arrested in January after joking on Twitter that he would blow Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster, England, “sky high” if his flight was delayed, was found guilty on Monday of the crime of sending a menacing message over a public telecommunications network.

Paul Chambers, a 26-year-old trainee accountant, was ordered to pay £1,000 ($1,500) in fines and court costs by a judge at Doncaster Magistrates Court, who said his post was “of a menacing nature in the context of the times in which we live,” according to The Daily Telegraph.

-- snip --

After he was arrested, and questioned for seven hours for possible violations of British anti-terror laws, the self-described “film-watching, football-loving, rubbish-talking, hyphen-using idiot,” told The Independent in London, “I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it.” The newspaper reported that the joke had immediate serious consequences for Mr. Chambers. He was suspended from work and initially told he would be banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, although that was later rescinded.

I love it that the airport was named after Robin Hood. But then, if Robin Hood were still around today, he'd no doubt get nicked for violation of some anti-terror law himself. The Sheriff of Nottingham is in charge these days.

Just Because You Should Know

The Department of State has thoughtfully provided an authoritative list of all Treaties in Force as of January 1, 2010 .

As every American knows, Article VI, Clause 2, of the United States Constitution says the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. treaties are "the supreme law of the land." Actually, in the case of treaties, they are maybe not quite so supreme as all that, but they are important nonetheless.

Read and discuss.

Modernizing Overseas Absentee Voting

I saw some excellent news tonight in the New York Times, States Move to Allow Overseas and Military Voters to Cast Ballots by Internet:

Nearly three million overseas and military voters from at least 33 states will be permitted to cast ballots over the Internet in November using e-mail or fax, in part because of new regulations proposed last month by the federal agency that oversees voting.

The move comes as state and federal election officials are trying to find faster ways to handle the ballots of these voters, which often go uncounted in elections because of distance and unreliable mail service.

About 22 percent of military and overseas voters surveyed were unable to return their ballots in the 2008 election because of such problems, according to the Overseas Vote Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

Cybersecurity experts, election officials and voting-integrity advocates, however, have raised concerns about the plan. They point out that e-mail messages can be intercepted, that voting Web sites can be hacked or taken down by malicious attacks, and that the secrecy of ballots is hard to ensure once they are sent over the Web.

I'm sure our overseas citizens appreciate the efforts of those cybersecurity geeks and voter-integrity advocates. But, really, how could internet voting be any worse than what we have now, when our present system disenfranchises a whopping 22 percent of overseas voters?

Here's the bottom line:

Johnnie McLean, the deputy director for administration at the North Carolina State Board of Elections, which has offered overseas and military voters the option to use e-mail or fax for their ballots since 2006, said that when she gets a call from a soldier overseas who has missed deadlines but wants to vote, she is glad she has the e-mail option.

“Even though there are security issues,” Ms. McLean said, “those soldiers are real happy, too, that they don’t have to lose their right to vote.”

It's about time the present absentee voting system got fixed. No one serving his nation overseas should have to wonder whether or not he will be able to cast his vote.

Faisal Shahzad: A Man For All Seasons

Passport has a nice summary of the news media feeding frenzy that took place after Faisal Shahzad's Times Square would-be carbomb fizzled.

Read all about what we thought we knew, but didn't really:

The bomber was a "lone wolf." Or maybe he was actually trained in Pakistan.

The bomber was a "white male." Or a light-skinned South Asian.

The guy taking off his shirt in the video was involved. Probably not.

Vietnam veteran Lance Orton first noticed the smoking van. Or maybe it was Senegalese immigrant Aliou Niasse.

The bombing was in response to South Park's depiction of the Prophet Muhammed. Or U.S. foreign policy.

Faisal Shahzad was arrested with two other men. But they didn't do anything.

Faisal Shahzad is from Karachi. Or maybe it was Peshawar. Or Kashmir.

Faisal Shahzad's father was a Pakistani military official. Or maybe it was his grandfather.

The Pakistani Taliban took credit for the attempt. Until they denied it. But it still kinda seems like they did it.

I can add a few more. Mayor Bloomberg speculated that the bomber must be a Tea Party guy upset about the healthcare bill. Or about something else. Shahazad was under the eagle-eyed surveillance of the FBI every moment. Or he slipped away, and the FBI lost him until after he had boarded a flight to Dubai. Shahzad was on a terrorist watchhlist in 1999. Or he wasn't really. Shahzad was motivated by news reports of Predator drone strikes in Pakistan. Or by video tapes of a Yemeni cleric's sermons. (Those last two might not be contradictory, I'll admit).

Maybe it's because of the ambiguity about him that Shahzad has become a regular Rorschach test for domestic politics. Do you notice how he seems to provide a peg for advancing all sorts of political narratives? His home mortage was foreclosed, so he's a victim of the housing bubble. He bought a gun, so new gun restrictions ought to be imposed. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, so we need to tighten up our naturalization procedures. He received both a student visa and a 'specialized work' H1-B visa, so we ought to stop admitting Muslims.

The development of this case will be a treasure trove of political opportunism.

Report on the Consolidation of Diplomatic Security Training (May 2008)

My post of yesterday about the law suit that has been filed by a community group in southern Maryland, in regard to the government's plans to construct a hard-skills security training center for State Department use, mentioned a government report on the consolidation of Diplomatic Security Training.

Here is a link to that report, courtesy of the Department of State itself.

I have no direct interest in the matter of where the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center eventually gets established. However, I can see why that report interests the community groups that filed suit, because it makes clear that as of May 2008 the Department of State desired to consolidate its security training at Bill Scott Raceway in Summit Point, West Virginia. That choice would make sense since the Department has been using BSR for driving and firearms training for 25 years, it is reasonably convenient to Washington DC, and the Department already has interim facilities there.

The report mentions due diligence, engineering, architectural and cost-benefit studies, as well as a Fiscal Year 2009 budget request, for acquiring and developing a 240-acre plot adjacent to BSR as a consolidated training site. It even has schematics of that plot and how it would be integrated with BSR and the existing interim facilities.

But, in late 2009, the Department announced that its best option for a consolidated training center is to create a whole new facility, for substantially more money, at a location that is farther away than BSR, and where there is no existing infrastructure to build on.

No one ever explained to the public why the Summit Point option was taken off the table during 2009.

Maryland Group Sues Over Foreign Affairs Security Training Center

Local citizens in southern Maryland have not gone along quietly with the federal government's plans to build a hard-skills training center for Diplomatic Security in their bucolic community. They have forced the government to hold a series of public meetings on the matter, but that did nothing to overcome their objections. Now, they are going to take the government to court.

The Queen Anne's Conservation Association (QACA) is suing to force the Department of State and the General Services Administration to release documents relating to the selection of a site in Queen Anne's County for construction of the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC). The Association had previously filed a Freedom of Information Act request for those documents, but received no reply.

Read the complaint here, and a press release from the Queen Anne's Conservation Association here.

The Association's spokesman says they have already informally obtained a “Report on the Consolidation of Diplomatic Security Training” and found that it contains some new information - new to the public, that is - which raises questions about the selection of Queen Anne's County for the FASTC. In fact, he says the Report indicates the government originally preferred Summit Point, West Virginia, which is one of the locations where the State Department currently conducts training. The Association would like to find out why Summit Point was dropped from the government's plans.

That sounds like a reasonable request to me.