On Saturday afternoon Twitter began a process of banning Open-Source Intelligence accounts (henceforth, OSINT) for unspecified, and, theoretically, unconnected tweets. The storm began when the news account @elintnews was suspended from Twitter for several tweets that, “violated the terms.” These tweets, however, were news tweets originating from open-source information on geo-political events on Iran, Israel, and India. A few of the tweets cited in an email to ELINT News were connected to India, but more had to do with other regions of the world. In the concurrent moments of Saturday afternoon, several other accounts such as @theupdatertu and @beepdelete were suspended. OSINT follower and commentator, @kashmirintel, was suspended as well. Venezuelan journalist @carlaangola was momentarily suspended; her account, however, has been restored.

In the following hours of Sunday morning and Sunday evening, other accounts began to experience shadow bans, or, outright suspensions. Shadowbans prevent users from searching and finding tweets by, or the accounts of the user shadow banned. If you type in the URL of the account or find a link to their Twitter, you can still access the account.

While the list is now too long to specify every OSINT account which has been shadowbanned, @aurointel and @natsecjeff are two of the larger accounts dismissed into the shadow.

Early Monday Morning, @intelcrab was suspended without a warning. According to him he woke up to a call from a friend who helps run his account, stating that they could not log in. After checking out a reset password issue, he realized that Twitter had stealth banned him. Two hours later, he finally received an email from Twitter citing a ban not for tweets, unlike the other accounts, but running multiple accounts to aggregate followers (a practice he has denied). Beepdelete, who covers South Asian events and OSINT activity was also suspended without a warning from Twitter.

UPDATE: (1425 Pacific Time) From IntelCrab, "For those who have not already seen the email Twitter HQ sent me, it appears that I was somehow spared from the Indian purge. While attempting to share the posts I had created via IntelCrab with the hashtag #UnsuspendElint on my personal account, it appears I was flagged for cross posting; a concern from Twitter HQ that I totally respect and understand. They have reached out, and although they have not reactivated my account yet, do seem like they plan on doing so in the immediate future. With this said, I'm not put in a seriously perilous spot. IF I am next on the chopping block, I will have no warning; it will be an instant permanent ban due to this most recent incident. @IntelCrab will re-appear...but for how long depends entirely on whether or not Twitter overrules the idiotic influence of those who wish to shut us down and reaffirms its commitment to the free and open share of information. I thank you all very much for the outreach and love over the past 10 hours, and look forward to logging on again very very soon. Stay crabby.” (Associated attachment from Twitter official email to IntelCrab)

Another major OSINT member, @intellipus, has averted the shadow ban thus far. Globalnews.watch is providing an updated listing of accounts that have been suspended. This article will be updated if any accounts are reinstated or if more accounts are suspended.

(Note: I delayed reporting on this until more details could be gathered. Further, Twitter has a history of making erroneous suspensions then reinstating those accounts a day or two later. This situation is apparently not the latter, as Twitter has not reached back out to any of the suspended accounts seeking help).