Thwarted London Terrorist Tweeted About His Plans

The evidence towards would-be London bomber and his ex-wife wasn’t particularly tough to search out. The pair stockpiled explosives in their London home, and set up a Twitter account to ask for advice on which goals to bomb, The Guardian reports.

Rahman’s deal with on Twitter, in keeping with Sky news: @InService2Godd. And his Twitter name? “Silent Bomber.” He didn’t encrypt his tweets, so there have been no obvious limitations for the intelligence neighborhood to search out them. Twitter subsequently suspended the account.

On Tuesday, Mohammed Rehman and Sana Ahmed Khan have been discovered guilty by using the outdated Bailey court docket, and sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting an assault in London to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2005 bombings.

This latest possibility raises some fascinating questions in regards to the steadiness between civil liberties and nationwide security. As ArsTechnica factors out, the tweets weren’t encrypted and have been posted (no longer very well or secretively) through one man. Are plots like these enough to warrant rules that may pull back privateness rights for all citizens?

U.k. legislation enforcement’s requests for account knowledge from Twitter look like ramping up. In its transparency file, Twitter said 299 requests have been filed within the first half of of 2015. that is a bounce from 116 requests in the latter 1/2 of 2014.

Social media corporations have been grappling with identical questions of the right way to balance free speech and security for years.

On Tuesday, Twitter revised its rules regarding hate speech on social media in response to criticism from the FBI and other teams that it’s not doing sufficient to help thwart terrorism.

“you may also now not promote violence towards or in an instant attack or threaten folks on the root of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, spiritual affiliation, age, disability or disease,” the revised ideas stipulate.

however the company additionally stressed that it continues to “include and motivate various opinions and beliefs,” while taking a hard line on those that cross the line.

Twitter mentioned it doesn’t comment on individual money owed and investigations.