It’s easy to make fun of Rep. Anthony Weiner for being the victim of a hacker who impersonated him online, but it raises some serious issues. If he’s telling the truth — and so far there’s no evidence to prove otherwise — then other members of Congress may be at risk. Not to mention everyone else with a Verified Account on Twitter.

First, an explanation of the Verified Account system is in order. When you go to Rep. Weiner’s official Twitter page, you see the following symbol in the top-right corner:

What does “Verified Account” mean? From Twitter’s help page (emphasis in the original):

Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities on Twitter. The goal of this program is to limit user confusion by making it easier to identify authentic accounts on Twitter…

Any account with a Verified Badge is a Verified Account. Twitter uses this to establish authenticity of well known accounts so users can trust that a legitimate source is authoring their Tweets…

Verification is used to establish authenticity for accounts who deal with identity confusion regularly on Twitter. Verified Accounts must be public and actively tweeting.

If this is the case, Rep. Weiner is claiming that Twitter’s verification system has failed. According to him, he’s not the one who posted that lewd picture to his Twitter account. He says that particular tweet was not authored by a legitimate source. Allegedly, his identity was stolen.

How is Twitter responding to this? I’m told that normally when a Verified Account is hacked, Twitter shuts it down until they can investigate. However, the @RepWeiner account has been online ever since that picture was posted. So I asked Adam Sharp (@AdamS), the Twitter staffer who handles Verified Accounts for government officials:

Mr. Sharp was kind enough to reply:

Which is understandable. But what about the privacy of all their other Verified Accounts? If a hacker can target a sitting member of Congress and Twitter does nothing but issue a “No comment,” what’s the point of having Verified Accounts in the first place?

Law professor Ann Althouse asks:

Should we all be closing our Twitter accounts lest some devious prankster destroy our reputation? Or has Weiner — for his own purposes — maligned Twitter’s business and undermined the Twitter-user’s sense of security? I want to know!

AND: If Weiner is lying about his accounts getting hacked, he could be sued by Twitter (and the other companies) for defamation.

I hope the latter isn’t the case. Either way, Twitter isn’t doing much to reassure other users, particularly those with Verified Accounts, that they’re protected from identity theft.

If a hacker can get away with maliciously impersonating a member of Congress, how can the rest of us be sure we’re safe?

P.S. Twitter e-mails Congress safety tips. But not the most important one…