FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media 133
Trailrunner7 writes "The FBI is in the early stages of developing an application that would monitor sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as various news feeds, in order to find information on emerging threats and new events happening at the moment. The tool would give specialists the ability to pull the data into a dashboard that also would include classified information coming in at the same time. One of the key capabilities of the new application, for which the FBI has sent out a solicitation, would be to 'provide an automated search and scrape capability for social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI/SIOC.'"
So. It begins. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can already assume that your 'public' posts are being seen by people you wouldn't want to see it, but now you know that it is automatic. Depending on data sharing agreements these companies come up with with the FBI, they might even get access to private information.
Hopefully, the latter isn't an issue and they're just scraping public information, but even then, any hopes of not being carefully monitored are dashed. Assume that everything public (and most things private) will be read by people other than the intended recipients. Privacy? What privacy?
Re:Terrorists putting their plots on FB? (Score:4, Insightful)
Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?
Egypt and Libya's uprisings were greatly facilitated by twitter and other social networking sites.
Not to say that we should overthrow the government, but, what about them using it to keep tabs on, say, the Occupiers and then using threatening, but legal, actions to undermine them?
Re:So. It begins. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what?
Yes, I sound cavalier, but I see so many people on /. blithely affirming that people should just know that what they put on the internet stays there forever, and should just know that their SSID is being broadcast and it's a good thing that it can be tracked and stored, and should be fine with people capturing anything whatsoever that's done outside the house, or in the house with the curtains open...
So I can't see that anyone on Slashdot has anything to complain about here. Or is it different because it's not Google doing it?
Re:Can you get Facebook to delete your info? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, you know, not everyone lives in the States where you can put any kind of garbage on paper. In other countries the data still remains under your control as this is a very basic and fundamental *right* and if you want to be removed, companies need to comply no matter what is written in a contract.
Now, you may start saying that this is a US company after all. Then again, since US arrogates itself the right to enforce US laws in other countries, I hope EU will have enough balls to do the same and black-out Facebook until they start complying with EU privacy laws . It's not that Facebook will be happy to loose such a huge number of users.
As a side note, and back on topic, I'd like to point out that the main problem is not the FBI snooping around. The real problem is that, in the long term, they will start pretending to be able to model social behavior; following a very long and prolific populist tradition of treating correlation as if it was causation. Then, after a period brain-washing the sheeple, they may simply start using such models to go after the populace.
What do you expect from a country that actively uses Polygraphs?
Re:and here comes slashdot, late again (Score:4, Insightful)
why does this site even exist anymore? reddit posts everything first, with less bias, and without all the self-loathing commentators screaming shill/troll/astroturf/mccarthyist label of the day.
We're here specifically to annoy you, AC. Looks like we're on top of our game again.
Re:Terrorists putting their plots on FB? (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't about terrorists. This is about Occupy Wall Street and the FBI being able to feed real-time intel to local police departments.
Re:Can you get Facebook to delete your info? (Score:2, Insightful)