Did #NDAA Already Take Down Twitter?

Did #NDAA already take down Twitter?

That's sure to be the rumor once (if?) the ubiquitous website goes back online after going down shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday amid news that the Obama administration will not be vetoing the bill.

The National Defense Authorization Act, or military spending bill, essentially authorizes the federal government each year to define the budget and spending of the Department of Defense.

This year the bill will authorize $662 billion in spending ­- a contentious enough issue on its own - but a number of add-ons this year have been even more concerning for activists, and Twitter users.

The bill is being lumped with the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, because both of them would bring new limits on the rights of American citizens. If you're reading this article, you likely know all about these bills, but if not read more about them here and here.

As of Tuesday, the hope among people opposing the bill was that it would be vetoed by President Barack Obama, but top administration aides signaled Wednesday afternoon that he will probably avoid such a move.

After the announcement that a veto was most likely not imminent, Twitter exploded with cries of pain, none of which could be quoted at the time this article was written because Twitter has -- OMG -- been down for at least 15 minutes.

The tweets ran the gamut from (I'm paraphrasing here): Thank god I live in Europe now to With #NDAA and #SOPA coming, we'll never tweet again, and of course Congress is a terrorist organization.

And Twitter's been down ever since, and not with the usual Fail Whale to explain it away. The message this time first read Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing-we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon. And as of 5:24 on our International Business Times computers, it only said No data received - Unable to load the webpage because the server sent no data.

Coincidence?