Federal Agents Quietly Using Social Media

SpuriousLogic passes along this excerpt from the ChiTrib: "The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too. US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. ... The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips. Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree... can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries." The FoIA lawsuit was filed by the EFF, which has posted two documents obtained from the action, from the DoJ and Internal Revenue (more will be coming later). The rights group praises the IRS for spelling out limitations and prohibitions on deceptive use of social media by its agents — unlike the DoJ. The US Marshalls and the BATFE could not find any documents related to the FoIA request, so presumably they have no guidelines or prohibitions in this area.

Comments

Is this what EFF should be doing with ACTA about ?

[unity100]

ACTA battle is much more important than any of these, for if it is lost, all of these will be petty issues and already lost by default.

i dont think EFF is doing enough to combat acta. they should be pushing more, and also doing consciousness raising campaigns. Notice how the u.s. govt. and us mainstream media avoids the subject to fool people. its as if nothing is happening, there is no ACTA.

this needs to be fixed.

Re:"Publicly available"

[kuactet]

Being moderated "Funny" must be hella demoralizing.

Re:Is this what EFF should be doing with ACTA abou

[unity100]

no i mean more. ACTA is equivalent with the anti network neutrality attempt the telecoms made back 2-3 years ago. its a BIG threat. yet, eff is taking it as if its another serious but not critical issue.

go to eff mainpage. you wont even see a mention of acta there as of this moment.

what i mean is EFF and other organizations should be banging drums mainly on this, frontpage, doing lobbying and consciousness raising and all, until it gets beaten.