FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media

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.'"

Comments

So. It begins.

[willaien]

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:So. It begins.

[kiwimate]

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:So. It begins.

[Jeng]

List of supposed trigger words as of @ 2005

http://www.rense.com/general66/scgh.htm

Re:So. It begins.

[VortexCortex]

List of supposed trigger words as of @ 2005

http://www.rense.com/general66/scgh.htm

Well then, let me just target myself by creating a story from choice words on that list... bolded for your convenience.

--------
"MITM won't work, they have firewalls", the portly nerd stated flatly, "Only way in is SSH over SSL, but brute forcing the RSA key may take eons."

"Let me try," said Skully as she sat at the terminal displaying the remote supercomputer's login prompt.

Despite entering many spook words, the correct phrase remained an enigma; They had all been incorrect passwords and the secure shell remained so.

The Infowar program's conspiracy theories blabbed over the radio. Posters on the wall proved the basement dwelling nerd who summoned her clearly had a fetish for redheads and Skully became uncomfortably aware of him now staring at her rack.

"Do we have to listen to this crap, Bubba?" said Skully in an effort to divert the nerd's attention from her.

The radio clicked off, and Bubba adjusted an old TV's UHF dial, past Bugs Bunny and paused momentarily on a news broadcast:

Police say the hacker group Anonymous ran into a speedbump of sorts after targeting a Unix Security Firm--

"Lame," remarked Bubba as he resumed his search, "Pseudonyms should be cool or at least ironic... like Verisign ."

Bubba chortled gelatinously as he arrived at his favorite show and said, "Firefly is great, ever seen it? Used to be on another Chan..."

Skully wasn't listening, she was intently staring at the debugging output on one of the various screens. Surrounded by miscellaneous glyphs and hexadecimal numbers was a single coherent word, "sardine".

Skully attempted the password, and immediately gained access. "That executive's fish breath wasn't exactly top secret."
--------

I hope the spooks find it an entertaining read.

Can you get Facebook to delete your info?

[Beelzebud]

I recently inactivated my account, but I know they still have all of that data. I looked, but found no obvious place to request that your data be deleted. Anyone have any first hand experience with getting them to actually erase your data?

Re:Can you get Facebook to delete your info?

[NIN1385]

If you are referring to Facebook, I don't think there is a damn thing you can do to get them to erase or not retain that data. I never started a Facebook account which would be the best advice I could give.

Wiki-leaks releases tons of information on the government and banks and they get punished for it, Mark Zuckerberg does the same thing to people and he gets praised.

On another note, my spell-check that Firefox uses wants to change "Zuckerberg" to "Rubbernecker". Interesting...

Re:Can you get Facebook to delete your info?

[mr1911]

It isn't your data. It is their data about you. Read the TOS you agreed to when you made the account.

Scream about it all you want, but you accepted the terms.

Terrorists putting their plots on FB?

[HockeyPuck]

Do we really think that terrorists are going to be coordinating things via FB?

It's like that old joke, what was Bin Laden's last FB entry?

"BRB, someone's at the door"

*Seal Team 6 likes this

Re:Terrorists putting their plots on FB?

[willaien]

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:Terrorists putting their plots on FB?

[tatman]

I read a few articles during and after the mayhem in London the police where having trouble coordinating their efforts because the rioters were using social media to communicate their plans. If I remember correctly, someone in British government structure has proposed a law to allow them to shut down social media sites in "emergencies". So I would assume the FBI motivation is more on these lines as the likelihood of social media sites can get legally shutdown. (btw I am in no way advocating shutting down social media or validating gov attempts to monitor it--just offering my thought as to motivations behind the FBI project)

Privacy?

[liquidhokie]

Who thinks Facebook is private? The whole point is to *not* be private, right? Otherwise... what is the point of Facebook?

If the FBI was going to start monitoring encrypted email, VPNs, and other things where you are *trying* to be private, I would be concerned (yes, I know-- whole 'nuther can o' worms). But Facebook? You are giving the info away as a user, that is the purpose of having a Facebook account.

Re:Privacy?

[webheaded]

I'm not giving away all my information on Facebook to the public. I keep things contained to people I actually know for a reason. Of course even then, I barely post much of anything because there are too many people on there. The fact of the matter though is that I didn't add the FBI to my friends list so they'd damn well better not be viewing my private information. It's not for them to have. I've specifically taken the steps MULTIPLE TIMES (thanks for constantly changing that Facebook, you assholes) to keep the information private. There's nothing particularly sensitive there but that really isn't the point. I said it was private and it had damn well better stay that way. I don't give a shit if it's out on the internet...it was understood that any random person should not be able to see my information when I marked all my profile fields and posts as FRIENDS ONLY.

Wake Up Mr. President!

[tgeek]

We have have highly credible reports that Farmville is planning a sneak attack on Washington. Air Force One is fueled and ready.

Re:and here comes slashdot, late again

[ColdWetDog]

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.