[LINK] FBI to monitor social media

[Jan Whitaker]

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly released details 
of plans to continuously monitor the global output of Facebook, 
Twitter and other social networks, offering a rare glimpse into an 
activity that the FBI and 
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200-pentagon-sets-its-sights-on-social-networking-websites.html>other 
government agencies are reluctant to discuss publicly. The plans show 
that the bureau believes it can use information pulled from social 
media sites to better respond to crises, and maybe even to foresee them.

The information comes from a 
<https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c65777356334dab8685984fa74bfd636&tab=core&_cview=1>document 
released on 19 January looking for companies who might want to build 
a monitoring system for the FBI. It spells out what the bureau wants 
from such a system and invites potential contractors to reply by 10 February.

The bureau's wish list calls for the system to be able to 
automatically search "publicly available" material from Facebook, 
Twitter and other social media sites for keywords relating to 
terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other FBI 
missions. Agents would be alerted if the searches produce evidence of 
"breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats".
Agents will have the option of displaying the tweets and other 
material captured by the system on a map, to which they can add 
layers of other data, including the locations of US embassies and 
military installations, details of previous terrorist attacks and the 
output from local traffic cameras.
[more at the link: 
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/01/fbi-releases-plans-to-monitor.html 
]


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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