On Wednesday, conservative blogger Charles Johnson helped organize a successful attempt to crash a media call held by Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) campaign team by blasting out the information for the conference call on Twitter.
Press conference details… Crash it with me in fifteen minutes? Call is 3 PM CST Tuesday Call in number: 530-881-1000. PIN: 287517# #mssen
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) July 2, 2014
The same blogger wrote on his blog about allegationg that the Cochran campaign bribed black voters in the Mississippi GOP runoff primary election.
During the Wednesday conference call, one caller repeatedly interrupted members of the Cochran team to ask why the Cochran campaign “harvested” votes from “blacks picking cotton.”
After the call was cut short, Johnson denied that he was the caller who kept interrupting with the accusations, but he may have violated Twitters terms of service by trying to get people involved in the call.
After the call, Johnson tweeted the personal cell phone number of a spokesperson for the Cochran campaign.
Publishing someone’s personal information, including “non-public, personal phone numbers,” can be a violation of Twitter rules. According to Twitter, not all postings violate the rules. The company takes into account the “context and nature of the information posted,” as well as local privacy laws.
Twitter wouldn’t comment specifically on whether Johnson’s tweet was a violation of the company’s policies.
“We don’t comment on individual accounts, but I can confirm that posting private information is a violation of our rules,” Nu Wexler, a spokesperson for Twitter told TPM in an email.
