Kroll Fraud Solutions Blog – A Dialogue on Data Security

Twitter posts, a.k.a “tweets,” seem to have reached a new level of importance or, at least, notoriety, in the last week when the Library of Congress announced that Twitter will share all public tweets since the site’s inception with the Library and Google announced they are making a certain amount of tweets searchable.

Matt Raymond, Library of Congress blogger, said in his post of April 14, “. . . it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. . .”

There’s a tenet in journalism that, in order to separate John A. Smith, who committed a heinous crime, from the law-abiding John A. Smith, who happens to live in the same town, the author includes the person’s address: “John A. Smith of 101 Anywhere Rd. was arrested today on charges of …” This is a simple, liability-limiting act that reporters have relied upon for decades. But how about this line: “John A. Smith, whose current location is the coffee shop on the corner of 5^th and Main, today announced …”