Hill tweeters lock out LegiStorm

Hundreds of users of the Congress-focused research organization LegiStorm have locked their Twitter accounts after the organization moved to aggregate their tweets last week, the head of LegiStorm told POLITICO, noting that the upheaval has sparked changes at the company.

POLITICO reported that Capitol Hill erupted as staffers learned that their tweets and Twitter accounts were compiled via a tool called StormFeed, published on the subscription site LegiStorm Pro. The organization started counting how many people on LegiStorm Pro made their accounts private, LegiStorm founder and president Jock Friedly told POLITICO. The bulk of the privacy status changes seem to have come from Hill staffers, he said - so far at least an estimated 266 have locked their Twitter accounts. Friedly noted that there are 1,798 congressional staffers in the LegiStorm Pro database; of those, 651 have protected their accounts.