Blame it on the hackers
Twitter has been much in the news this month, and people are slowly becoming aware that they need to be more responsible for the things they write online and publish to the planet.
Actress Lindsay Lohan (aka Lilo) tweeted a couple of strange tweets this month. During Hurricane Sandy, when much of the USA was reeling from its impact, Lohan tweeted "WHY is everyone in SUCH a panic about hurricane (i'm calling it Sally). Stop projecting negativity! Think positive and pray for peace."
The second questionable tweet was "How does Hitler tie his shoes?" Surprisingly, this tweet seemed to create more controversy than the first. A short time later, Lohan posted asking her followers to ignore the previous tweet as her twitter account had been hacked. Newspaper's picked this up and ran headlines "Lindsay Lohan's Twitter account hacked" and often included the line "confirmed by Lindsay Lohan".
However, cynics have pointed out that the hacker is also a convenient excuse these days for people who post things and later regret it. At one time, viruses were the oft-blamed culprits. Error in the spreadsheet? Blame it on a virus. Sent copies of confidential documents to the wrong people? Blame it on a virus. Nowadays its easy to blame things on hackers. Made an ass of myself on Twitter? Blame it on a hacker. That's not to say that Twitter accounts don't get hacked. Far too many people still use weak passwords, think no-one will ever guess it is their name written backwards, and most of all assume no-one would ever be interested in hacking them.
Here in the UK, Sally Bercow, the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, has deleted her Twitter account after a series of blunders. She was one of many who incorrectly named Lord McAlpine, and may now be sued. It is also reported that Bercow used Twitter to ask about the teacher involved in a current court case and named the child involved. This is a breach of section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act which can carry a fine of up to £5,000. Finally, her Twitter account was apparently broken into by someone who used broken English to call her a "stupid woman" and criticised her for using a weak password.
In the UK, whilst many people have thought that they could tweet whatever they wanted with impunity, there is a growing realisation that publishing has consequences. The Attorney General told MPs "An offence committed on the internet remains an offence. It is my belief that public awareness and understanding of this has been raised by a number of high profile cases and court proceedings over recent months. These have resulted in both fines and imprisonment for the offenders and have been widely reported."
Over in South Korea, there is no doubt that the law applies just as much to Twitter. A court has given a 10 month suspended sentence to 24 year old Park Jeong-Geun for retweeting North Korean propaganda. Even though Park says he was tweeting them as a joke because they were so ridiculous, he had nevertheless broken the National Security Law which prohibits the glorification of North Korea's dictatorship.
28th November 2012
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.