[Bev]

Originally Posted by Mr A.Anderson

As you well know, data collected by US spying programs, is being shared with foreign governments.

US authorities can spy on the iCloud without a warrant

Yep. I've not heard of a waycist tweeter being dragged into court and the prosecution saying "the US told us who you were" but I don't doubt at all that this method is how initial information is gleaned and then backed up with clues from the Twitter profile/tweets.

Ages ago, I posted a story that said the US Library (I think) copied and recorded every single tweet ever sent (for historical purposes ) It's not unreasonable to think that various European governments decided this was a good idea and followed suit.

133,000 gigabytes worth of tweets currently takes days to search, but The Library of Congress is nonetheless trying to archive American Twitter use for posterity

The venerable US institution is assembling all of the 400 million tweets sent by Americans each day, in the belief that each of the mini-messages reflect a small but important part of the national narrative.

"An element of our mission at the Library of Congress is to collect the story of America, and to acquire collections that will have research value," said Gayle Osterberg, director of communications at the library.

The Library of Congress, located off the National Mall in Washington, houses millions of hard copy books and historic documents, and its online archives amass millions of additional works produced by Americans for more than two centuries.

Now it wants to be keeper of the nation's brief internet messages as well: Twitter in April 2010 signed a deal with the Library, giving it access to tweets dating back to the company's inception in 2006.

Collecting the 140-character micro-missives, said Osterberg, is in keeping with the library's main goal "to collect the story of America and to acquire collections that will have research value."

One major challenge to the Library, however, is storing the messages from the popular social messaging site, which now number 170 billion. Twitter last month said the number of active users on the messaging platform has topped 200 million, most of whom are in the United States.

Tweets that have been deleted or that are locked will not be among those gathered by the Library of Congress.

Among the messages to be preserved for posterity are the first-ever tweets sent by one of the company's founders, Jack Dorsey.

Also saved for all time is a famous tweet sent by President Barack Obama after his historic November 2008 victory to claim the White House in his first term. "We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks," it read.......

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/libra...#ixzz2bqyHejlo

The internet (and the US authorities) never forgets.