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FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media

Posted by Soulskill on from the they-know-you-read-everything-you-can-about-bieber dept.

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.'"

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. So. It begins. by willaien · · 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?

  2. Terrorists putting their plots on FB? by HockeyPuck · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    1. Re:Terrorists putting their plots on FB? by tatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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)

      --
      I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
  3. Privacy? by liquidhokie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.