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EFF Wants To Know If the Feds Are Cyberstalking
rossendryv writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and UC Berkeley's Samuelson Center filed suit in California's Northern District, asking the court to force a number of government agencies to hand over any documents they have concerning the use of social networking sites as part of investigative procedures."
I just poked Osama Bin Laden on his wall.
"The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York has announced a RICO case has been filed against all players of the game Mafia Wars. It is clear that these are hardened criminals who not only kill without remorse, but share their results on social networking sites. The US Attorney's Office thanks the social networking site Facebook for their cooperation in bringing these mobsters to justice."
Why wouldn't the feds do this? It would be irresponsible of them to *NOT* look at social networking sites for illegal activities. I'm not saying that there's a treasure trove of information there, but come on, this isn't private data we're talking about here. If the FBI or CIA ir CSIS or NSA or ABC is looking for info on me, they should at the very least be putting "Beardo the Bearded" into Google and following the links.
If someone is putting things up in public for anyone to see then I can't see any problems with a government agency looking over these records. I'm all for privacy, but once you put it up in public, good luck, Mrs. Streisand.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The summary is misleading. The suit is more about what the Feds are doing with that data and the policies surrounding it, not that the Feds are using social networking sites for investigations.
"Powers. I have them."
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean the feds aren't following you on facebook/twitter...
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
If you read TFA, you'll notice that in general the EFF doesn't have a problem with these types of practices. It's just FOI requests are getting stalled/ignored.
Are the Feds watching Facebook and other social networking sites? Did the STASI keep tabs on East German citizens? I find it amusing to see people, especially those who are naïve about the way the world works, shocked that intelligence agencies might actually monitor information which they so graciously posted for all the world to see (gasp). Perhaps now they will receive a first hand lesson in why some of us consciously refuse to participate in social networking sites.
there was a story recently of police busting someone for underage drinking based on facebook pictures. the problem with arresting someone based not on catching them doing an illegal act, but by heresay or pictures... is that how can it be proven?! "that was apple juice" "i was being facetious" shouldn't those be the only needs of defense against such allegations, true or not? this is the inherant flaw i see in this policing method.
....my wife woke up and found weird crop circles in Farmville. She swears she didn't plant them that way.
So, if you have a friend on Facebook who had to get security clearance, you were investigated.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The issue isn't with, say, getting into facebook and checking out all your stupid farmville posts / drunken photos or etc, the issue is more on the privileged access side of things. Start thinking along the lines of your social graph and the back end of these sites and you have the gist of the real privacy issue here.
How many times you've viewed a certain profile, the times of day you access the system, the timeline of your creation and deletion of connections with other people, the correlation of your mood from content against these actions etc etc. Base level data mining activity. Volume, frequency, timing. Combine this with X number of social sites and other activity in the cloud and you can get a pretty concise picture of someone's life depending on their volume of online interactions. It doesn't matter what the _actual_ content is, it's the least important part of the picture.
Most of the responses to this topic online tend to drill down and go "I don't care if X can see my posted Y, I posted it assuming it was public domain". It really indicates that people are only aware of about a third of the real activities that are captured when you interact with social networking sites and the cloud as a whole.
Really.
Chances are, no one in government cares about you, or your drunken antics posted on facespace. If they did, well, you put it out in public, so quit complaining when they read it.
Take the tin foil off. You're not that interesting outside your little circle of friends.
What the heck is "cyberstalking?" Doesn't wholesale wiretapping of both voice and data include this cyberstalking notion? EFF already sued over the patriot act and Obama's administration has made it even worse than before. Not even Bush kept email lists of their political enemies (as far as we know), so the question is moot.
Out of idle curiosity, is it safe to click that link, or will doing so get the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc following me? I'd just like to know so that when the feds show up I'll know what to say.
$ make available
Next question.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Look, the guy is holed up in a cave with a couple of goats in the middle of Nowhere, Pakistan (And still the US can't find him, but that's another lol). He has to send a runner with a cassette tape 500km to the Al Jazeera office every time he has a new fatwa to issue.
It's not like he's going to be updating his Facebook status very often.
Osama has updated his profile : Today I feel like crushing infidels.
Fahid commented on Osama's post : lol habibi.
Ahmed likes this.
Mohammad pokes Osama.
Osama has been busy in the kitchen and has cooked too many Kung Pao Chicken. Help him out on Cafe World.
Osama has been downgraded to level 1 in Habbo Hotel, because he keeps blowing up his buildings (sorry, it slipped out).
As for the rest of the world, the signal to noise ratio is just too great for the Feebs to glean anything useful. Christ, I only have family and a few close friends on my FB, but the amount of drivel they post is unreal.
I'm on the bus going to town. ...
I'm at town.
I saw blah blah in town.
Where ?
At the coffee shop.
I nearly said hello, but thought I'd tweet you instead.
and so on, and so on
Social Networking sites are the type of tool that the govt. agencies have wanted for years now. It helps them with their investigations into cells of criminal activity. Consider how say the mob works. Vinny the Boss, hires Joe Schmo to do his job but uses cash at a drop zone. Well Joe has to have had some way of knowing to take the job from Vinny. So a Social networking site like application help piece Vinny and Joe to the same coffee shop that they frequent. Now think of the limitless potential power of investigation that can be performed. All legal, the info is public, so no warrants are necessary, the cells of criminals are oblivious as to how they are nabbed.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.