From the post:
…Push back against back doors
Calls for the mandatory inclusion of back doors should therefore be resisted. Their potential use by criminals weakens overall internet security, on which billions of people rely for banking and payments. Their existence also undermines confidence in technology companies and makes it hard for Western governments to criticise authoritarian regimes for interfering with the internet. And their imposition would be futile in any case: high-powered encryption software, with no back doors, is available free online to anyone who wants it.
Rather than weakening everyone’s encryption by exploiting back doors, spies should use other means. The attacks in Paris in November succeeded not because terrorists used computer wizardry, but because information about their activities was not shared. When necessary, the NSA and other agencies can usually worm their way into suspects’ computers or phones. That is harder and slower than using a universal back door—but it is safer for everyone else.
By my count on two (2) tweets from The Economist, they are running at 50% correspondence between their tweets and actual content.
You may remember my checking their tweet about immigrants yesterday, that got 304 retweets (and was wrong) in Fail at The Economist Gets 304 Retweets!.
Today I saw the When back doors backfire tweet and I followed the link to the post to see if it corresponded to the tweet.
Has anyone else been checking on tweet/story correspondence at The Economist (zine)? The twitter account is: @TheEconomist.
I ask because no correcting tweet has appeared in @TheEconomist tweet feed. I know because I just looked at all of its tweets in chronological order.
Here is the uncorrected tweet:
As of today, the uncorrected tweet on immigrants has 1.1K retweets and 707 likes.
From the Economist article on immigrants:
Refugee resettlement is the least likely route for potential terrorists, says Kathleen Newland at the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. Of the 745,000 refugees resettled since September 11th, only two Iraqis in Kentucky have been arrested on terrorist charges, for aiding al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Do retweets and likes matter more than factual accuracy, even as reported in the tweeted article?
Is this a journalism ethics question?
What’s the standard journalism position on retweet-bait tweets?