FBI Releases Official Plans to Monitor Facebook, Twitter

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Caught this on Reddit today:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/01/fbi-releases-plans-to-monitor.html


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 other government agencies (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200-pentagon-sets-its-sights-on-social-networking-websites.html) 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 document (https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c65777356334dab8685984fa74bfd636&tab=core&_cview=1) 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.

The document suggests that the bureau wants to use social media to target specific users or groups of users. It notes that agents need to "locate bad actors...and analyze their movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions". It also states that the bureau will use social media to create "pattern-of-life matrices" -- presumably logs of targets' daily routines -- that will aid law enforcement in planning operations.

The use of the term "publicly available" suggests that Facebook and Twitter may be able to exempt themselves from the monitoring by making their posts private. But the desire of the US government to watch everyone may still have an unwelcome impact, warns Jennifer Lynch (https://www.eff.org/about/staff/jennifer-lynch) at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group.

Lynch says that many people post to social media in the expectation that only their friends and followers are reading, which gives them "the sense of freedom to say what they want without worrying too much about recourse," says Lynch. "But these tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US".

The document also suggests that the FBI thinks it can use social media to peer into the future. It notes that agents need to use social media to "[p]redict likely developments in the situation or future actions taken by bad actors (by conducting, [sic] trend, pattern, association, and timeline analysis)".

The bureau declined to immediately comment on how this analysis might work, or on any other aspect of the document, but the idea of turning agents into digital soothsayers is plausible: researchers working at Facebook and in academia have shown that social media can be used to infer many things about an individual, including the existence of friendships that are not declared on social networking sites (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/02/1006155107.full.pdf+html) and the location of users who have not revealed where they are based (http://cameronmarlow.com/media/backstrom-geographical-prediction_0.pdf).

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think it was probably pretty obvious that they did this already.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

They were doing this before... I remember hearing stories,from years ago,that teenagers would be arrested for posting "threatening" posts on their wall which supposedly targeted the president. Among other stories that is... besides, everyone knows they do this anyway;at this point everything is just being made formal.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

They were doing this before... I remember hearing stories,from years ago,that teenagers would be arrested for posting "threatening" posts on their wall which supposedly targeted the president. Among other stories that is... besides, everyone knows they do this anyway;at this point everything is just being made formal.
The general consensus is that they monitored it casually in the past, nobody's denying that.

They're contracting out someone to write software that will allow them to systematically monitor everything posted to facebook and twitter on an unprecedented level. Before you could casually post things that were "off" from the 'Standard American Patriotism' and nobody would notice. This is trying to analyze every single post to the two networks.

[Ele'ill]

It's probably gonna cover previous posts too.

[Ele'ill]

Gear up to troll the FBI

[Os Cangaceiros]

The general consensus is that they monitored it casually in the past, nobody's denying that.

They're contracting out someone to write software that will allow them to systematically monitor everything posted to facebook and twitter on an unprecedented level. Before you could casually post things that were "off" from the 'Standard American Patriotism' and nobody would notice. This is trying to analyze every single post to the two networks.

I seem to remember news stories years back about government agencies having software to monitor certain phrases on the internet, though. I remember reading about it on some news forum, and one of the users there added "bomb infidels Allah jihad" to his signature in response to the story.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Sure enough, the parade of repression marches on. When will anyone stand up and stop this? Who knows? All I know is eventually when you can't say anything remotely against the government out of fear of arrest then it will be too late .

Well, I had better delete my facebook then. Although I don't know how I am going to keep in touch with all of my friends from the US. I am pretty political with some of the shit I say on there when discussing things with friends, never saying things like "death to America" or whatever but still, I don't want the feds prying into my life.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Well, I had better delete my facebook then. Although I don't know how I am going to keep in touch with all of my friends from the US. I am pretty political with some of the shit I say on there when discussing things with friends, never saying things like "death to America" or whatever but still, I don't want the feds prying into my life.

Say "Death to America" and make everyone else say it - FBI trolling in action. Not necessarily so simple and daft, perhaps, but something like it. Unless you plan to travel a lot to the U.S., of course, then it might be inadvisable...

[Os Cangaceiros]

The thing about Facebook is the only things the FBI etc. are going to see about you on there are things you yourself put up, so I don't think it's worth getting hung up about. People should just be smart about what they post online. If you're involved in potentially criminal activities that the authorities have taken an interest in, then you probably shouldn't be on Facebook, because I would think that investigators would be just as interested in who you know and how you know them as they are in what you post.

[Pretty Flaco]

I dunno about you guys, but I have absolutely nothing remotely worth being surveyed by the FBI on my facebook.
"OMG, this guy liked gucci last week! let's wire tap him later!"

[Comrade Samuel]

Oh good now everyone will just type "bomb,bomb illegal immigrant jihad" to troll them, their sensors will have a sizure. XD

[Drosophila]

Would any intelligent discussion go on on those sites anyway?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Would any intelligent discussion go on on those sites anyway?
Quite a few of my friends are at least outspoken liberals, especially on facebook. One anarchist and two left-coms. Much more are critical of the government in some way without expressing a concrete set of political views. Another 3 people are outspoken proponents of animal rights ... another group historically targeted.

I know I'm about to go remove some of the political stuff from my profile ...

[bcbm]

i try to never post or 'like' anything that is too 'out there' politically. i shake my head at my friends posting anarcho riot videos.

[PhoenixAsh]

it is a cop out to say: I have nothing to hide.

It is the basis on which all invasion of privacy laws are passed. Buy making people believe that they have nothing to hide. Fact is...you have no freaking clue if you have got nothing to hide or not...or when the nothing you have now...turns into something a little later on.

So what about this? The FBI will be aware of your entire social network. And everything your social network does.

It also isn't merely a matter of YOU being discreet on your facebook....but about the discretion of everybody in your friendslist and their friendlists.

[bcbm]

it is a cop out to say: I have nothing to hide.

It is the basis on which all invasion of privacy laws are passed. Buy making people believe that they have nothing to hide. Fact is...you have no freaking clue if you have got nothing to hide or not...or when the nothing you have now...turns into something a little later on.

its a cop out to expect the state to do anything less than use every tool at its disposal to gather data on its enemies, ie all of us.


So what about this? The FBI will be aware of your entire social network. And everything your social network does.

It also isn't merely a matter of YOU being discreet on your facebook....but about the discretion of everybody in your friendslist and their friendlists.

it doesn't mean there is no point in taking a small precaution. i don't think it amounts to much, i just think it is silly to be so open about your politics on something like facebook if your politics involve overthrowing the government.

[Sendo]

Anyone remember that Onion article saying "FBI Declares Operation Facebook a Success"? I've been saying for four years that the Onion isn't funny anymore because its satire doesn't go far enough. Everything they post about the government or the right-wing, no matter how ridiculous, invariably comes to fruition.

How Bad Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be? -- 30 Million Americans Wonder
Working Class Unsure How Best to Fuck Itself This Election Year
etc etc

The Onion has had some very sharp satire...but all of it comes true. If Jonathan Swift were writing for it today, by 2014 the GOP would start recommending unemployed single mothers to sell their babies as a delicacy food (but not the pre-born of course!) and the Dems would start saying they should only sell an arm or leg of the baby.

[Sendo]

Quite a few of my friends are at least outspoken liberals, especially on facebook. One anarchist and two left-coms. Much more are critical of the government in some way without expressing a concrete set of political views. Another 3 people are outspoken proponents of animal rights ... another group historically targeted.

I know I'm about to go remove some of the political stuff from my profile ...

Too late. In fact, the EU is mulling over the human "Right to Be Forgotten" since the stuff's already logged as had been since day one and is undeletable. NO MATTER WHAT unless you destroy a bunch of data farms across the USA.

Google has been caching the text content of your status updates (even if you maxed out your privacy settings) for years and years.

[blake 3:17]

Assume there is a spy in every group and just get on with it. Mostly be cautious about putting others at risk or being talked into stupid foolish behavior or boasting about that behavior.

This board would be closely watched.

[RevSpetsnaz]

Thats why i dont have an account on any social media site.

[Ozymandias]

A few people have already mentioned that a ton of people will religiously saturate the net with boundless loads of terrorist spam. How could they, the feds, possibly differentiate between the trolls (the smart one's) and the true "terrorists"... or should we expect the feds to just simply carpet bomb society, indifferent to the true nature of the posts.

[bcbm]

its not about finding terrorists, but monitoring patterns in order to create profiles as well as predict disturbances...

[Marquess]

So the Government has pretty much shown that it sees us all as enemies that need to be constantly monitored (This new shit) and indefinitely detained by the military if need be (NDAA), and are constantly trying to censor us and gradually curb our rights to defend some of their corporate interests (SOPA, PIPA, ACTA).

Anyone else just waiting for the Government to declare war on the people already?

[Ele'ill]

A brief google keyword search of "Can the police monitor facebook" yields quite a bit of evidence stating the obvious that yes they do and have done so for a while now. The compromising of my 'facebook radical network' is kinda a non-issue cause the vast majority of my radical friends don't use it at all and the few who do are willing to take that risk. Law enforcement already knows who I am. I may have benign political involvement pictures up- the cops already know cause they were there too. I may chat about stuff that has just legitimately hit a twitter feed cause it's already in the open and only if it's low risk.

[getfiscal]

I don't see what's wrong with this. Shouldn't the police investigate things? If someone posted "I'm gonna kill that guy" in a public place and meant it and the police didn't follow up and someone died I'd probably be concerned that they weren't doing their job. They have to be reasonable about bothering people for jokes, but monitoring facebook is a good idea.

[Ele'ill]

I don't see what's wrong with this. Shouldn't the police investigate things? If someone posted "I'm gonna kill that guy" in a public place and meant it and the police didn't follow up and someone died I'd probably be concerned that they weren't doing their job. They have to be reasonable about bothering people for jokes, but monitoring facebook is a good idea.

I think the most accurate way to address this is, no. The issue would be the continued purpose of the institution.

[Lucretia]

I suppose these will now co-exist with their already underway secret monitoring of these sites?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I suppose these will now co-exist with their already underway secret monitoring of these sites?
The monitoring before wasn't comprehensive. This is monitoring software that records what's put on Facebook en masse, and then runs it through analysis software. Nothing will go unnoticed now.

[Lucretia]

You think this wasn't happening before? Sucking up emails, chats, and internet transmissions en masse, and tagging keywords for further scrutiny?

[piet11111]

And yet when it comes to right wing terrorism like what happened in Germany the intelligence agency's turn out to be aiding them.

They don't care about fighting nazi's their after us lefties.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

You think this wasn't happening before? Sucking up emails, chats, and internet transmissions en masse, and tagging keywords for further scrutiny?
There was nothing dedicated to monitoring and analyzing everything on facebook, or they wouldn't be accepting bids to develop such a system.

I think you accidentally typed 'revleft' in your browser instead of 'infowars'

[Lucretia]

There was nothing dedicated to monitoring and analyzing everything on facebook, or they wouldn't be accepting bids to develop such a system.

I think you accidentally typed 'revleft' in your browser instead of 'infowars'

Infowars? Look, if you want to believe that the govt does not monitor all cleartext internet traffic tagging keywords for further scrutiny, I won't try to disabuse you of your dreams of the Bill of Rights.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Infowars? Look, if you want to believe that the govt does not monitor all cleartext internet traffic tagging keywords for further scrutiny, I won't try to disabuse you of your dreams of the Bill of Rights.
You're insane, a troll, or you lack proper reading comprehension.

First of all, I didn't even mention the bill of rights. Second, I didn't say they weren't monitoring anything (which you are falsely stating that I implied), I said there was nothing dedicated to systematically monitoring facebook or they wouldn't be accepting bids to build such a system.

You need to go here -> http://www.infowars.com where you can go talk about FEMA death camps with other nutjobs spouting off baseless conjecture

[Lucretia]

Oh all right. You've convinced me. The government has the ability to listen in on every single phone call placed between the US and overseas. But it doesn't have the technical infrastructure to check what's happening on facebook. Right. There's one born every minute.

I am not saying they are out to track you down and throw you in jail for chatting on revleft. I am saying it's best not to be naive about the technical surveillance capacities already in place. Have you never heard of NarusInsight? This is not stuff you should be hysterical about. But you should be realistic about it. The content you transmit over the Internet is NOT private. Nor is it anonymous.

I remember the days when you could safely assume some degree of privacy online (probably back before you hit puberty), but those days have long since ended.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Oh all right. You've convinced me. The government has the ability to listen in on every single phone call placed between the US and overseas. But it doesn't have the technical infrastructure to check what's happening on facebook. Right. There's one born every minute.

I am not saying they are out to track you down and throw you in jail for chatting on revleft. I am saying it's best not to be naive about the technical surveillance capacities already in place. Have you never heard of NarusInsight? This is not stuff you should be hysterical about. But you should be realistic about it. The content you transmit over the Internet is NOT private. Nor is it anonymous.

I remember the days when you could safely assume some degree of privacy online, but those days have long since ended.
Now that you've elaborated a little bit, I think we may just be misunderstanding each other.

I never denied that they are monitoring communications, and I never denied that they can't "check up on facebook". But it's not comprehensive. It's not consistently monitoring everything at the same time. You can still manage to slip under the radar to some extent. This system they are taking bids for will allow comprehensive monitoring of facebook and twitter. As in, where some things could slip past their prying eyes before, absolutely nothing will once this is in place.

[Lucretia]

Now that you've elaborated a little bit, I think we may just be misunderstanding each other.

I never denied that they are monitoring communications, and I never denied that they can't "check up on facebook". But it's not comprehensive. It's not consistently monitoring everything at the same time. You can still manage to slip under the radar to some extent. This system they are taking bids for will allow comprehensive monitoring of facebook and twitter. As in, where some things could slip past their prying eyes before, absolutely nothing will once this is in place.

I don't think you quite understand how government monitoring of sites like Facebook works. Nobody gives a flying fuck about when you check into the dry cleaners using your cool smartphone facebook app. The government does its best to ignore practically everything it technically has access to, to let things "slip past its eyes." It spends considerable time and money developing pretty sophisticated algorithms to sift through all that bullshit to hone in on the .001% of content that it anticipates to be of, aherm, "interest." But again, don't be naive enough to think that if there isn't some kind of friggin' press release about the government monitoring whatever website that the government must not be able to pick up and minitor data being transmitted to and from that particular server. All that data goes through major backbones owned by corporations cozily in bed with the government. It requires serious encryption to evade this, so as I said, practically everything you transmit via cleartext over the 'net is subject to, shall we say, inspection.

[runequester]

Indeed. You should always assume that everything you do online is subject to surveillance.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Indeed. You should always assume that everything you do online is subject to surveillance.
No shit, sherlock.

[runequester]

No shit, sherlock.

Funny that you edited out the insult in your original post. Watson.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Funny that you edited out the insult in your original post. Watson.
Hey, I don't want an infraction.

Although, it's not my fault neither you nor Lucretia can comprehend what I was saying.

[runequester]

Hey, I don't want an infraction.

Although, it's not my fault neither you nor Lucretia can comprehend what I was saying.

I never report posts. No skin off my nose if you want to sound tough on the internet.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I never report posts. No skin off my nose if you want to sound tough on the internet.
That is such a cop-out :rolleyes:

Way to play the victim card to cover your own ignorance.

[runequester]

That is such a cop-out :rolleyes:

Way to play the victim card to cover your own ignorance.

Is this some sort of dare?
You obviously realised your initial action would have been considered out of line by the forums moderators, and corrected your behaviour, and yet now you persist?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Is this some sort of dare?
You obviously realised your initial action would have been considered out of line by the forums moderators, and corrected your behaviour, and yet now you persist?
Stating that someone is ignorant of the details of a given subject is out of line? How so?

You're obviously attempting to stir shit up here.

[runequester]

Stating that someone is ignorant of the details of a given subject is out of line? How so?

You're obviously attempting to stir shit up here.

Yes, obviously. Report it and let the mod's sort it out.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Yes, obviously. Report it and let the mod's sort it out.
I'm not going to bother them with something as silly as this...

[runequester]

I'm not going to bother them with something as silly as this...

As you please.

Relevant to the overall topic but a little tangential:

https://ssd.eff.org/

The EFF has rather extensive advice sections on data security, surveillance of communications, legal rights (and lack of), steps to improve communications and data security etc.

Of course, a corporate owned communication service like twitter is hopelessly compromised by default, but this is still usefull information to at least be aware of.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

As you please.

Relevant to the overall topic but a little tangential:

https://ssd.eff.org/

The EFF has rather extensive advice sections on data security, surveillance of communications, legal rights (and lack of), steps to improve communications and data security etc.

Of course, a corporate owned communication service like twitter is hopelessly compromised by default, but this is still usefull information to at least be aware of.
Interesting, I'll have to send that link to a few people. I had no idea the EFF had this up.

[runequester]

Interesting, I'll have to send that link to a few people. I had no idea the EFF had this up.

I stumbled across it randomly a while back. Its very US specific, law wise, but it's absolutely worth looking into.