In the House of Commons last week, Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews introduced sweeping legislation primarily providing law enforcement mandated access to basic account information from Internet Service Providers. The theme (as all crime bills especially seem to require themes and titles these days) was protecting children from online predators, but in fact is an over-arching policy which goes much further: requiring ISPs to install software to retrieve information account holder information, preserving data, and granting the Minister powers to appoint ‘inspectors’ for warrantless searches:

As noted by the CBC’s Terry Milewski:

The inspector, says the bill, may “examine any document, information or thing found in the place and open or cause to be opened any container or other thing.” He or she may also “use, or cause to be used, any computer system in the place to search and examine any information contained in or available to the system.”

You read that right. The inspector gets to see “any” information that’s in or “available to the system.” Yours, mine, and everyone else’s emails, phone calls, web surfing, shopping, you name it. But, if that sounds breath-taking enough, don’t quit now because the section is still not done.

The inspector — remember, this is anyone the minister chooses — is also empowered to copy anything that strikes his or her fancy. The inspector may “reproduce, or cause to be reproduced, any information in the form of a printout, or other intelligible output, and remove the printout, or other output, for examination or copying.”

Oh, and he can even use the ISP’s own computers and connections to copy it or to email it to himself. He can “use, or cause to be used, any copying equipment or means of telecommunication at the place.”

In short, there’s nothing the inspector cannot see or copy. “Any” information is up for grabs. And you thought the new airport body scanners were intrusive?

Finally, note that such all-encompassing searches require no warrant, and don’t even have to be in the context of a criminal investigation. Ostensibly, the purpose is to ensure that the ISP is complying with the requirements of the act — but nothing in the section restricts the inspector to examining or seizing only information bearing upon that issue. It’s still “any” information whatsoever.

Image: @RJMcClelland

The backlash was fast, and creative. An anonymous Twitter account, @Vikileaks30 began posting details of Minister Toew’s divorce, with the IP of the account traced to a House of Commons address by the Ottawa Citizen. That lead to a call for the Speaker of the House to investigate, which as noted in the podcast, might be problematic: there are as few as four IP addresses serving thousands of MPs, staff and civil servants in multiple buildings on the Hill.

A more creative response was the Twitter hashtag #TellVicEverything which trended around Canada, even reaching the number 2 spot worldwide. Thousands of Canadians posted mundane, often hilarious, missives on what they were doing...you can view highlights here. We have yet to see if the cross party and public advocacy against Bill C-30 will lead to alterations, or even a re-think. Remember, in the US, the SOPA and PIPA bills were essentially dumped after a massive online reaction. More insight via Maclean’s, have a read of Andrew Coyne’s comment in The National Post.

The 2012 Presidential race is heating up, and while the Republicans are still fighting out who will win the nomination – the GOP race is THE BEST reality show on TV – the Democrats are busy building on the online success of 2008. Going beyond using social media primarily for fund raising, an experienced team is using Facebook as the platform to target voters. See the Guardian UK on the Chicago Democrat Headquarters and how Facebook was used to beat an incumbent mayor in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Podcast: On CFAX1070AM with host, Adam Stirling

Vic Toews (courtesy Times Colonist)

While writing this, the meme is continuing on Twitter under the hashtag #TellVicEverything. An inventive response to the proposals in bill C-30 – and possibly some alterations in the legislation will be forthcoming (Globe and Mail). It appears Canadians advocating online privacy rights do not appreciate being compared to child pornographers.

The Storify curation below is a very small sample of the thousands of tweets submitted…

Updated February 17th, 1915 PST

Andrew Coyne is a columnist with the Canadian newspaper The National Post, and member of CBC’s At Issue Panel – also a prolific tweeter, but this is a new reach…and, quite brilliant. We wait for the second instalment.

In this case, the proposed Saturday January 28th blackout of Twitter misses the mark entirely. While many would enjoy a day away from formatting 140 characters, the hype around Twitter’s ‘Country Blocking’ policy, leading to a call for users to abandon the service for a day, is misguided. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and news organizations have all attempted to deal with the issue of censorship in certain countries – China being a long term target, although Belarus, Thailand, Iran, Gulf States come to mind recently – yet none of those companies have tried a nuanced approach which weighs heavily in favour of users, yet respecting laws.

and as per the blog photo – it does not matter what blocks communication. Cats are very effective.

Twitter Policy (Full post)

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

This post by Zeynep Tufekci is one of the better analyses: Technosociology

In my opinion, with this policy, Twitter is fighting to protect free speech on Twitter as best it possibly can. (It also fits with its business model so I am not going to argue they are uniquely angelic, but Twitter does have a good track record. Twitter was the only company which first fought the US government to protect user information in the Wikileaks cas,e and then informed the users when it lost the fight. In fact, Twitter’s transparency is the only reason we even know of this; other companies, it appears, silently caved and complied.)

Twitter’s latest policy is purposefully designed to allow Twitter to exist as a platform as broadly as possible while making it as hard as possible for governments to censor content, either tweet by tweet or more, all the while giving free-speech advocates a lot of tools to fight censorship.

Hard to argue – in fact this is a case where a social media company realizes the best way forward for all, is to allow the service to work in restrictive environments. Will tweets be blacked out? Sure. Will some governments block the service? Yes – but Twitter, unlike Google, which adopted an all or nothing approach in 2010, or Yahoo – which complied completely, have largely failed to gain ground either to advance an open internet in restrictive environments, freedom of speech, or even their own business, while the demand from activists living within suppressive regimes for a worldwide voice is ever increasing.

History  is telling. The Google, Yahoo, Facebook debacles trying to gain a foothold in the world’s largest and fastest growing online community resulted in not only those companies losing potential user revenue, but fostered a growing copycat model (Huffington Post – China’s Social Media). Twitter’s policy might not be what free speech advocates view as ideal, but at least it provides a bridge across the digital divide.

Instead of a Twitter user blackout, how about ‘adopting’ an activist? If you are reading this post you are likely active on social media, have an online network, and (I hope) are a critical thinker. Choose a person or an organization that that you feel deserves attention – one suppressed by internal or external forces beyond their control. They could be 1000 miles away, or in your neighbourhood.

Social media is fun, yes. Fantastic platforms to connect, share: reinforce and make new friends. Those same platforms speak truth to power.

Video – Clay Shirkey

On Saturday January 28th, don’t blackout Twitter. Promote a cause.

Your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome

Piracy of copyright material is an issue, not one to ignore as it costs content producers: musicians, movie makers, photographers to name a few – billions of lost revenue each year. What is at issue is how any government can and should legislate against website owners (bloggers), internet service providers, file sharing services, and search engines no matter where they reside.

The key parts to each act specifically authorized US law enforcement to block non-US websites and online services if they were accused of hosting pirated material. Placing the onus onto bloggers, social media platforms and search engines to ‘police’ all their links, resulted in one of the largest online backlashes ever seen:

From O’Reilly Radar

Consider the following statistics:

162 million Wikipedia page views, with some 8 million visitors using an online form to look up the address of their Congressional representatives.
7 million signatures on Google’s petition.
200,000+ signatures on the Progressive Change Campaign Committee petition.
30,000+ Craigslist users called Congress through the PCCC’s website.
250,000+ people took action through the EFF’s resources.
2.4 million+ SOPA-related tweets were sent between 12 a.m. and 4 p.m. on January 18.
140,000 phone calls made through Tumblr’s platform.
Nearly 1,000 protesters outside New York’s U.S. Senators’ office in New York City.
The key metric to consider for impact of this action, however, was not measured in digital terms but by civic outcomes: 40 new opponents in Congress.

As we spoke on air, news was coming in that both bills have been postponed, but the debate will continue as the entertainment and content industry seeks more protection. One solution is simply market forces, as Michael Geist eloquently points out in his Huffington Post article.

Podcast: SOPA, PIPA

There are WordPress plugins like Embedly, Twitter search windows, Facebook feeds etc. that somewhat clunkily will take a search term from a single feed and embed the latest comments on any given topic, but not a simple system that allowed a blogger or journalist to gather together posts from multiple social media platforms. Of course, Storify has been around since – well, April 2011 – which has a boon for news junkies, pollsters, politicos, presenters – and used by some news organizations in an experimental fashion. The potential has been proven with PBS NewsHour, The Vancouver Sun, Al Jazeera using the system to collate social media responses to a news item, curating and essentially preserving a digital history.

As a public platform, Storify is not only for experts or large organizations. In fact is a fairly simple, understandable, drag and drop interface which can be used by anyone as a stand alone ‘story’, curating responses from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube from a local event to ultra-national such as the Occupy movement and demonstrations in the Middle East.

Now that Storify has a plugin for WordPress, the possibilities to create blog posts out of social media posts is realized, and maybe more importantly for bloggers (like myself) who like to add some opinion, to include a Storify embed, directly from the dashboard, adds a wonderful dimension to articles.

Note: as the news came out of the WP Storify plugin I added it to this website, which is normally accessed on Mac Lion OS 10.6.8 with Firefox 4.0.1 and it failed. The first time I’ve seen any WP plugin report a browser issue. The good part of this story was @Storify directly responded: and in fact updated the plugin the next day, although Firefox for older OS versions on Mac are still problematic.

_________________________________

How Storify Works in WordPress

After downloading, installing and activating the Storify WP plugin to your self-hosted WordPress system, a new dashboard tab will appear in the left side menu. Clicking on that tab will open the story window, where you can easily login to Storify using Twitter or Facebook (or a unique user name and password) accessing a similar search/drag and drop pane as in Storify itself. Simply search for a topic and grab the tweets, Facebook messages, Youtube videos and Flickr photos that are relevant to your social media curation.

Once you hit publish in the Storify plugin, a new blog post will appear with the link embeded, where you can add other content as in a regular post. (It will also be directly published on Storify as well) – alternatively you can create within Storify or WordPress, and embed, as per below:

Expect to see far more blogs and news orgs using WordPress combined with Storify to create stand alone articles; to supplement and enhance stories.

As always, comments and questions are welcome, and please do share examples!

Social Media has been a natural progression and interest, more so as clients depend on advanced knowledge and skills. While research is a major part of what any Public Relations and marketing professional should be doing, it is often a dreary job simply looking at numbers that relate to a single brand, company or organizational effort. That work, and especially looking at the bigger picture, has a brighter side with conversations and connections in the political, public relations and media world: individuals with similar concerns and thoughts. So, thank you to the many who have opened my mind, shared thoughts and opinions, and allowed me the opportunity to voice my opinions (however wrong they might be) in the media and classroom – Professors: Janni Aragon (@janniaragon) and Raul Pacheco Vega (@raulpacheco) – Media: Theresa Lalonde, CBC (@TheresaLalonde), and Adam Stirling at CFAX1070 Victoria (@Adam_Stirling) where we have taken a shared interest, and online conversation, on the radical changes in media to the radio.

Social Media in 2012

The full half-hour podacst of the CFAX interview is available below. We began the interview by noting the number of social media users, a staggering jump in 2011 on Facebook and Twitter, and how that combined with the numbers of people with internet access and mobile devices has reached a critical mass. Underlying every major news event – in fact, the creation of the news that dominated 2011 (Arab Spring and Occupy) – was the use of social and citizen generated media.

So what will 2012 bring? Will social media platforms continue to see a rise in users? How will our own consumption and sharing of news change media organizations? Will governments change interactions with citizens?

Audio – Interview with Adam Stirling on CFAX 1070 AM, Victoria BC

2011 was a year of quakes, shakes, upheavals – highbrow and lowbrow news that zinged around the world as fast as people could press ‘re-tweet’. Luminaries were lost: Memories of Christopher Hitchens and Vaclav Havel faded in the haze of despair with the news, just under the year end wire, that Katy Perry and Russell Brand are no longer Hollywood’s golden couple.

With the past 12 months seemingly rife with daily misadventures, what will 2012 bring?

1: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act): The US Congress really hates pirates. After a mass public movement kills any hope of passing legislation against domestic online piracy, lawmakers simply change the name of the Bill to ‘Somalia Offshore Piracy Action’. AK-47 toting ship thieves can now be legally hanged for copyright infringement.

2: Cats will again dominate video: Despite 35 hours of compelling, informative and culturally significant video uploaded to YouTube every minute, 8 of the top ten online videos of 2012 will be about cats. Snoring cats, felines chasing radio controlled cars operated by stoned teenagers, cats rescuing firefighters stuck in trees, cats smoking bongs and chasing teenagers with radio controlled cars, cats shitting in toilets and flushing…you get the point. The only two non-cat related top ten videos are of Katy Perry without her wedding ring, and twenty minutes of Rick Perry playing pocket pool behind his lectern during the final GOP Leadership debate. (He wins, the debate)

3: GST/HST a matter of dialect: After soundly denouncing the British Columbia Harmonized Sales Tax in a 2011 referendum, citizens believe a return to GST/PST is simply a matter of time. Not so – scrambling to re-instate the tax, new BC Finance Minister Dean Fortin realizes former premier, and anti-HST campaigner Bill Vander Zalm, was in essence, the solution. In the Dutch language, ‘G’s are pronounced as an ‘H’; by publishing all finance and tax policy in Dutch the two taxes will be linguistically combined!

4: City of Victoria: Long serving city councillor Pam Madoff announces in July she will resign to realize a life-long dream of becoming a heritage building. Facing huge infrastructure costs for a new recreation centre and fire hall, along with operational financial shortfalls, council declares a by-election and referendum for November. As a cost saving measure, Victoria voters are asked to approve a single, combined building – fire station, library, pool, nuclear power station and sewage treatment plant, or accept a 4000% property tax increase. Residents reject both and move en mass to Saanich, where Mayor Frank Leonard declares a state of emergency (on Twitter) and asks for immediate assistance from the UNHCR (also, via Twitter). When asked why he didn’t phone for assistance, the Saanich Mayor replied ‘are you kidding? Prime Minister’s office phone support is a 2 hour wait. On Twitter it’s immediate’

5: Personal Art: Hipsters declare QR code tattoos ‘so passé‘. The 2012 trend for skin ink are # tags – #Momma, #I’mWithStupid, and the ever popular #♥. Twitter wins the # trademark and immediately sues 15 million for copyright violation and lifetime royalties; admitting ‘this is really the only way we can make money‘.

6: EU: Realizing that centuries of diplomacy and two ruinous world wars failed to gain domination, Germany says “schraube dieser“, takes advantage of the financial crisis, and simply buys Europe. Nothing really changes except state dinners, where the menus are heavy on schnitzel and Riesling wine; and Paris is renamed Merkelville.

7: RIM: Canada nationalizes Research in Motion with Prime Minister Harper justifying the move as ‘the only way I can have private conversations with Peter Mackay when he is in a helicopter‘. Rioters worldwide rejoice.

8: BC Ferries: 30 major dock crashes, 2 sinkings and the Queen of Coquitlam arriving in Honolulu instead of Swartz Bay (to the delight of passengers) – new BC Ferry Chairman Gregor Robertson admits hiring Thai tuk-tuk drivers to replace experienced captains as a cost saving measure, saying ‘hey, if they can navigate Bangkok floods, surely Active Pass ain’t a problem. Enjoy our new yoghurt bar!‘. To increase revenue, passengers and vehicles are charged per kilo – reducing American tourism to Vancouver Island to zilch, not only for the weight factor, but US version Blackberry conversion App is faulty (Imperial gallons to fat ratio qualified in terms of US debt level and Canadian $, combined with GIS sends most travellers to Victoria. Virginia).

9: Social Media/News: Journalists worldwide collectively raise hands and surrender to citizen media, admitting ‘for each credible, authoritative and balanced report we generate there are 5 million anecdotal, biased blogs/videos/Facebook updates and Tweets: we can’t compete‘. Every major news organization simply becomes a Twitter timeline. (and is subsequently sued by Twitter for copyright infringement)

10: Fiction/Books: After lengthy meetings with her bank manager (the EU emergency bailout fund), author J.K. Rowling realizes she cannot justify buying Belgium without publishing another book. Taking a cue from Star Wars, she goes back in time and announces: ‘Harry Potter: The Magic Diaper Diaries‘ (4 part series). To appease anti-witch, religious zealots: in chapter two, Harry is simultaneously circumcised, baptised, entered into the order of Masons, and adopted by the Taliban. Chapter three, with Harry and Hermione, as toddlers playing ‘doctor’ to heal his abused ‘wand’, becomes the 2012 online meme. Pre-sales rocket, with 30 year olds lining up in front of theaters two years in advance of the movie release.

11: US Politics: Tea Party collectively surrender when Michele Bachmann is revealed to be both a male cross dresser, and gay. While they commiserate over coffee, Mitt Romney renounces Mormonism, joins the Rastifarians, and proposes the immediate legalization of marijuana, taxation of said product to solve the US debt crisis, and re-tasking of the Keystone pipeline to pump hash oil from British Columbia directly to Washington DC ‘where it is needed most‘. In a counter move, Obama joins the Mormons in order to ‘regain the center of US politics‘.

12: The Mayans are right…

Wishing all readers a Happy 2012!!

Without going into the actual merits of the US legal case, points immediately became clear in both the judgment, and following commentary:

The US District court judge held for the plaintiff, Obsidian Finance Group, against Crystal Cox in part by defining a journalist as:

affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.

The Oregon ruling against Crystal Cox seems to limit legal protection within the US only to media content producers within traditional networks, and who can produce a contract of employment. Yet there are plenty of examples of networks and syndicates which would seemingly deserve the same protection, and individual news sources, who through their own efforts, have similar broadcast influence. The court’s definition, on it’s own merits, seems extremely 20th century. The proliferation of online media channels, where anyone can create a ‘news’ network – YouTube Channels, WordPress.com, Blogger and more – as free platforms, begs the definition, as the each could be included in the ruling. In fact, they might in any followup appeals.

What was interesting was the almost immediate followup in The Seattle Weekly, with an opinion, that had the case been judged in Washington State, rather than Oregon, the outcome would have been the opposite – although both states, among 40 others, have agreed to a ‘shield law‘.

Washington State defines news media as: [from Washington State Legislature]

Any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book publisher, news agency, wire service, radio or television station or network, cable or satellite station or network, or audio or audiovisual production company, or any entity that is in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means, including, but not limited to, print, broadcast, photographic, mechanical, internet, or electronic distribution;

and even that definition is limiting as, while it goes further than Oregon to somewhat protect solely online articles, the inclusion of ‘regular’ implies that a one off article, or someone who posts on their blog (or through another network) irregularly, is somehow not deserving the same protection. Frankly, the time frame, or platform, should not matter. It is the content that counts.

Many opinions on this particular topic, weighing in on the US centric implications:

David Carr, New York Times – “When Truth Survives Free Speech“  [Twitter @carr2n]

In the pre-Web days, someone like Ms. Cox might have been one more obsessive in the lobby of a newspaper, waiting to show a reporter a stack of documents that proved the biggest story never told. The Web has allowed Ms. Cox to cut out the middleman; various blogs give voice to her every theory, and search algorithms give her work prominence.

and check the continually updated opinion articles through Google on this particular case…

The problem with the Cox case is not only a poor example for case law of a citizen seeking truth to power, but one who herself looks to define the online platforms as her playgrounds:

“I have a gift for getting on top of search engines and I want to give voice to victims of the corrupt judicial system,” she said in an interview by phone. “The system wants to shut me up and they have been trying to for years.”

“I’m glad I lost the case, because it gives attention to what I have been doing,” she added, saying she doesn’t have money to hire an attorney — she represented herself in the defamation case — let alone $2.5 million to pay in damages. She plans to appeal.

As one who tries to empower people, journalists or not, to be brave – to research, write, and publish thoughtfully using online tools, that rich available online democracy, I would agree citizen journalists should adhere to a code of best practices. In many examples where blogs and social media have combined to create a meme for or against an authority, there is a moderation factor in numbers: not so in this case. Crystal Cox might be correct, might not, but her example should not be the legal precedent to judge all others.

Of course, the Cox case is US law, and will likely be appealed. Canada does not have a ‘shield law’ per se, nor do most countries. In fact journalists, especially citizen bloggers, have been targeted in 2010/2011 around the world. [Reporters without Borders] In Canada, courts do not differentiate between a journalist and citizen in terms of access to information, or offer particular protection under law. Each are equally liable especially in terms of defamation and libel.

In the US, the 1964 case of New York Times vs Sullivan defined defamation laws:

The Court held that the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity). Under this new standard, Sullivan’s case collapsed.

Protecting sources is another matter entirely. Journalists employed by legacy media usually work under an editor, and within guidelines and standards. Before publishing using anonymous sources there is often a conversation with an editor to receive final approval – is the source trust worthy, is anonymity a requirement? Citizen Journalists often do not have the luxury – or some would say the limitations – of an editor, yet individually published blogs have broken news, especially on celebrities and technology using insider and anonymous sources. The lead up to any gadget launch creates a wealth of speculation, and sometimes lawsuits – see Wired, Think Belligerent

Much like the Oregon ruling, the disparity in applying the US Shield Law to cases applies in Canada. On one hand the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled in favour of hyperlinking vs potential defamation – yet in two other judgements ruled in the first that sources were not protected [National Post, et al. v. Her Majesty the Queen], and in the second, that protecting sources was the rule: [Daniel LeBlanc case]

Where does this leave citizen journalists? Not much difference than a year, two years ago or since the beginning of the internet. Legality always takes time to catch up with technology, and legacy media the same time frame to meet, and attempt to match, those who feel mainstream media are not reporting the news that matters. Read Kayt Davies article on Activist Media

If the only journalists are the ones employed by networks, mastheads and agencies, this makes it fairly easy for tyrants and wrongdoers to hide their activities from the eyes of the world. Only the latter are likely to come poking around uninvited and throwing up a simple media ban can keep them out, as even they are not well enough resourced to put up a fight, and without access they struggle to assert that there is something wrong going on that they should be allowed to report on.

The flies in the ointment of this sinister scenario are the philanthropic social media activists who are all about going into trouble spots to teach ordinary people the difference between journalism, blogging and propaganda; and sharing how to do journalism basics (such as WWWWWH and inverted pyramid writing style please, watch your tenses, and a fact isn’t a fact until you have it confirmed by three sources). Some, such as WestPapuaMedia.info, also teach how to use phones and cameras to maximum effect, and how to minimise chances of being arrested, killed and/or having footage confiscated. Other examples are NarcoNews and BurmaVJ.

Corporate media, and publicly funded publications cannot, will not fill the entire demand for information. For both it might not be in their interest or mandate; time and publication space constraints limit output. Especially at the hyper-local level and niche interest, citizen media amply fills that role. Recognizing that, there is far more collaboration now between established media, paid journalists and citizen reporters – with that, there is also a teaching moment.

Comments: This post was written over a few days, talking to a number of journalists, bloggers, and commentators. The following are a few of the comments received:

From Tom Hawthorn (Twitter: @TomHawthorn): who I have to thank as being very proactive and helpful with links, and thoughts.

(From Twitter) I’d like 1st Amendment type wording, plus a Sullivan v. NYT type libel ruling, plus better FOIA, plus shield law for all citizens.

Not my area of expertise, but whistleblower/shield law might be beneficial for Cdn society.

Via Sean Eckford on Facebook

And a point worth making Mat, is that citizens, or bloggers, are not subject to the same rules on defamation or libel as journalists… but that journalists are subject to the sames LAWS on defamation and libel as every Canadian citizen. Period. On this one the phrasing does matter!

and: As for privilege etc… to me a key distinction is who do you answer to? I’ll agree any blogger or citizen journalist an be considered as a member of the profession if they are bound by a recognizable and enforceable code of conduct – such as the CBC’s standards and practices or those in the broadcast industry etc. After all, to use an extreme example, I can’t set up as “citizen doctor” just because I have the ability to attract patients and even cure one or two. If you’re a blogger and you’ve got a page on your blog that outlines the code of conduct you work under, with consequences and a way for the reader to tigger those consequences – welcome!

With thanks to Tom Hawthorn, Sean Eckford, Emmett Macfarlane, Ross Crockford, Kate Gardiner, Gillian Shaw

as always, comments are welcome…

While spam accounts, bots and hacks are relatively easy to deal with: block users, bots and change your password if hacked (also, ensure you trust applictions that share your Twitter account details), established profiles that emulate who you are on Twitter are more difficult to solve, and can be far more insidious and potentially reputation damaging.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

This has recently been a cause for concern locally in Victoria BC, where a number of local Twitter users have reported impersonations, often multiples copying a single profile – and the ‘attacks’ are spreading. Unlike reporting a spammer, or automated spam bot, accounts which impersonate someone else require the direct investigation and intervention by Twitter itself.

There have been a number of recent cases where both Twitter and courts have come to different conclusions if, for instance, an account which purports to be someone, usually with a high public profile, can be considered art or satire. See the Seattle Pi “Racism and Twitter impersonation prompt lawsuit for Kirkland teen”

PMO Harper

This is especially true with political Twitter accounts, where the proliferation of satirical accounts is evident. The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has his own verified Twitter profile, but contends with a number of emulators, usually satirical rather than supportive.

Of course, with high profile public figures it might be expected in the contemporary media environment to tolerate such ‘invasions’, less so with more subtle impersonations of Twitter users with only a few hundred or thousand followers. As the right image illustrates, @pmoharper makes it clear in the profile the Twitter account is a parody, and in fact protected under Canadian Law, unless only posts are out rightly libelous.

Twitter does offer verified accounts, however their former public application process has been suspended, requiring either an advertising account, or API partner application before consideration.

How do I get my account verified?

This program is currently closed to the public. This means we are not able to accept public requests for verification.

Why is the Beta verification program currently closed?

Twitter’s public beta version of account verification is no longer available. After a long period of manual testing, we’ve closed public applications. We have removed our public-facing verification request form. In the meantime, we’re still verifying some trusted sources, such as our advertisers and partners. If you’re one of our partners or advertisers, please follow up with your account manager for details.

@writingvictoria – real account

As actual verification is currently unavailable for the vast majority of Twitter users, dealing with impersonations is problematic. The type of accounts that are plaguing some users are more subtle – using completely different user names, or slight variations, but often employing the same profile picture and text.

This does not appear to be possible with automation, in other words, someone is actually creating new Twitter accounts using the information from established profiles. The impersonations also seem to be random, copying some accounts with very few followers and posts, other with far higher numbers, and it is growing. At the time of publishing this, over 30 local Victoria BC Twitter users have reported impersonations.

Showing in the images are the ‘real’ @WritingVictoria, (Left Image) and the impersonation account (Right Image below). As with most seen, the accounts are very new, mostly use the real profile picture, and the profile text with a word or two slightly modified. Each impersonation also (so far) seems to only post two ‘tweets’, usually a repeat of an actual

@writingvictoria impersonation account

message from the ‘real’ account, sometimes with a nonsense post.

The point of these types of emulation accounts is currently unclear. Locally there is a great deal of awareness, with the Victoria BC network actively assisting each other to identify when someone has been impersonated, as we often do with Direct Message spam. While they appear to be harmless, an irritant and mainly a matter for speculation (who is doing them, what is the purpose…), the fact a person or group is spending the time to create these is worrisome.

They could be used to send spam advertising, phishing links – repeat messages from the real account with a link modified to a ‘bot’ website, as an example. The other possibility is to game SEO, or search engine optimization. Many savvy and technically adept social media and web marketers understand the growing relationship between Search and Social Media. Google especially has integrated real time search, including live blog, Twitter and Google Plus updates. An impersonation account could possibly interfere, reduce ranking, or become a top hit, impacting online reputation.

How to Report an Impersonation Account.

Twitter does have an online form to report impersonation accounts. Read the policy:

What is impersonation?
Impersonation is pretending to be another person or entity in order to deceive. Impersonation is a violation of the Twitter Rules and may result in permanent account suspension.

Twitter users are allowed to create parody, commentary, or fan accounts. Please refer to Twitter’s Parody Policy for more information about these accounts. Accounts with the clear intent to confuse or mislead may be permanently suspended.

If you see someone obviously impersonating your profile with the potential to harm, this is what you will need to record, and then report to Twitter itself.

Who can report impersonation?
Twitter processes impersonation reports from the user being impersonated or someone legally authorized to act on behalf of the user/entity.

What information do I need to include when reporting impersonation?
In order to investigate impersonation, we need the following information:

Username of the person impersonating you (or the URL of their profile page):
Your First and Last Name:
Your Twitter username (if you have one):
Address:
Phone:
Brief description of the impersonating content:
If you are not the person involved in the impersonation, but are legally authorized to act their behalf, please include the information above in addition this information:

Your Name:
Phone:
Fax:
Company Website:
Company domain email address:
Your title and legal relationship to the person/entity involved:

You can then file a Ticket Request using this form on the Twitter website.

If your account has been impersonated, or you know someone who has experienced this issue, let me know how Twitter dealt with the request for action.

As always, you thoughts, ideas and comments are appreciated