The Morning Dispatch: Is Twitter Secure?

Congress examines a high-profile hacker's whistleblower complaint about the social media giant's privacy and data security practices.

By and
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Happy Wednesday! And happy seventh birthday to one of the dumbest news cycles in recent memory.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the annual rate of inflation decreased in August for a second consecutive month, from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent. That figure was driven largely by falling gas prices, however, which obscured alarming rates of inflation in other areas of the economy, like food, shelter, medical care, furniture, and cars and trucks. Core inflation—which excludes the 5-percent drop in energy prices and 0.8-percent jump in food prices—increased at a 6.8-percent annual rate in August. The news all but ensured the Federal Reserve will continue aggressively hiking interest rates in the coming months, sending stocks tumbling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.94 percent on Tuesday—the index’s worst day since June 2020—and the S&P 500 dropped 4.32 percent.

  • The primary season is officially over after Democratic and Republican voters in New Hampshire, Delaware, and Rhode Island went to polls yesterday. Some key takeaways:

    • In New Hampshire’s GOP Senate primary, retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc—a MAGA candidate who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election—narrowly edged out state Sen. Chuck Morse, who conceded around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. Bolduc will face incumbent Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan in the general election.

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  1. Jo Jijive

    “Despite this probably being our 50th hearing,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, “we have not passed one bill out of the U.S. Senate when it comes to competition, when it comes to privacy, when it comes to better funding the agencies, when it comes to the protection of kids.”

    Perhaps someone could suggest to Sen. Klobuchar that they try passing a bill on just *one* of those things at a time? And maybe scale back her ambitions to a law on which she can get broader consensus? (I know that's crazy talk.) It sounds to me like there's plenty that could be done to improve Twitter's security that would be completely non-partisan, and Twitter has essentially 0 incentive to do it unless laws are passed.

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    SD

    Just looked at my private messages. About 75% of them are arranging trades in my local Buy Nothing group, and the rest are from my neighbors looking for recommendations for contractors or talking about kids lighting off fireworks. So I would say I would mostly be accused of being boring.

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    Bill Nelson

    QOTD: I would be totally screwed. I have been using tictac to send secret flight control data to the Elbonian military to prepare them for the end of days.

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    Jonathan Crymes

    After I stopped tweeting, I read some of my old tweets and realized how silly I sounded. So I deleted all of them one-by-one over the course of about 18 months. Re-reading several years of one’s own public statements and imagining how you sound to other people is cringey, lemme tell you.

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    Norman Shatkin

    From the quote on the REASON story: "Economic liberty, including international trade and private property rights, stands in the way of progressives’ desire for an egalitarian and democratic order in which no one is ever again expected to work for someone else."

    If you needed a reason (pun intended) for why the left and right are so polarized , you might start with this total misrepresentation of the program of every single progressive I know, both in political office and out of it. Come on, guys. At least PRETEND you're trying to make a point about the war instead of just firing another salvo and pretending it was intended to bring about peace.

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    Chris

    By affecting our politics the way it does, Twitter serves the interests of China and Iran whether they involve themselves or not.

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  7. The original Optimum.net

    Just a follow up to a thread from last week. Yet another Russian executive has died mysteriously whilst on a business trip.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-nikolayevich-sungorkin-ally-of-vladimir-putin-dies-of-apparent-stroke-on-business-trip?ref=home

    Being a Russian executive is becoming more perilous than being the #2 guy in Al Qaeda.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    I know that TheDispatch.com's writers and editors are surely tired of hearing me abuse them for their continued use and promotion of Twitter.

    Fellow readers: If you don't think embedding Tweets here is promoting Twitter, you should turn in your Internet Membership card and move to a desert island, by the way. Whatever else TheDispatch.com's writers and editors may disagree with me about when it comes to Twitter, it's surely not THAT. It is an economic reality, an obvious and indisputable one, that embedded tweets drive mouse-clicks and therefore ad dollars to Twitter.

    But I cannot fail to take this golden opportunity to point out the SPECTACULAR AND DISTASTEFUL CONGNITIVE DISSONANCE on display when TheDispatch.com runs a Morning Dispatch headlined "Is Twitter Secure?" — to which the answer is an emphatic "No, not remotely" — and then, without catching a single breath, goes on to embed multiple tweets here.

    Stop feeding the beast. You're too smart for it to be anything but KNOWING complicity in the genuine social evil that is Twitter.

    Twitter delenda est.

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    Richard Maxton

    QoTD: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    Not screwed at all. I don't HAVE any private messages on any social media. If you thought these social media companies had any interest in protecting your privacy, then you haven't been paying attention.

    Use an app with encryption, people, even when just texting. Big Brother is watching. And so are all his cousins, not to mention that nosey neighbor Gladys Kravitz. (Hi Gladys!)

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    Adam Bridge

    QotD: Why does it have to be China or Iran? Why not the GOP or the Dems? There's a kind of deep bias here that is disturbing to me. Why not Russia? Or some criminal enterprise? Because the real issue is would you want your message history on public display. And which message history? Signal or Telegraph or just Twitter? Or e-mail? Sigh. Not a good question given all the other things going on today.

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