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After FOIA, Homeland Security Releases Social Media Monitoring Guides
v3rgEz (125380) writes "With a Freedom of Information Act request, MuckRock has received copies of two of the guides Homeland Security uses to monitor social media, one on standard procedures and a desktop binder for analysts.
Now asking for help to go through it: See something worth digging into? Say something, and share it with others so we know what to FOIA next."
Now asking for help to go through it: See something worth digging into? Say something, and share it with others so we know what to FOIA next."
See, they really are the most transparent administration every!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
...the document is borderline lame.
It takes 88 pages of government document to say what format to cut-and-paste news articles you captured while browsing websites and capturing TV with some media cards into emails.
There's some analysts, and they sit in a cube, and they watch MSNBC and surf HuffPo, and when there's an earthquake, they send an email using very specific fonts, or IM each other about it.
I've saved you 88 pages of reading.
You're welcome.
muckrock must be a fucking idiot if it can't scour 146 pages by itself.
Social media is all about volunteering your data, connections, friends lists, etc for data-mining. Even without the NSA in the picture, that's what happens.
If you go from being harvested by N entities, to N+1, then N/(N+1) approaches unity for large values of N. What difference does one more make? Once it's harvested, it will be passed on, and you can't control which companies pass which info to who.
News flash: if you do X, X will happen. In this case, X = volunteer your data for harvesting.
Now, maybe it's a little different being the gov and all, who has guns etc etc, but giving it up for commercial use pretty much also implies also giving it up for gov use.
Idiots come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
If you know someone who uses social media, and you use social media,
you know at least two idiots, and one of them is you.
There's the laws on the book, that we can all read, then there's these:
guide lines, procedure manuals, legal memos, training documents, handbooks, etc etc etc.
The average person only has access to half of the actual legal documents that effect them every day.
The noxiousness of the NSA's spying is compounded by secret courts and secret interpretations.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They keep their Daily Watch Log in a Google spreadsheet. Exportable to Excel, of course.
some things exist just to justify their existence.
The average person only has access to half of the actual legal documents that affect them every day.
FTFY
I agree. But there is nothing secret about their "interpretations",
The NSA and the like, pretty much do the same thing, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, do. Find was to re-word the language, in order to get away with their own naive "interpretations" on either well written laws, or terribly written laws.
The secret courts I believe are pretty much Federal Courts and it seems they have power over the Supreme Courts, according to how one chooses to interpret the Constitution the Federal Courts/Laws are illegal and should be eliminated, . I doubt it will stop the Washingtons defunct politicians from allowing these agencies absolute power.
Fuck off asshole
From your very own link:
Affect ... A verb meaning “to produce an effect, to influence”: “I knew that my opinion would affect her choice, so I deliberately withheld it.” ... A verb meaning “to accomplish”: “His newfound sense of responsibility effected a positive change in her attitude toward him.”
Effect
The legal documents in use by government agents have an effect, or influence, on us and on our actions and decisions (that's the point of their existing in the first place, after all). The documents are not feeling a sense of accomplishment.
GP got it right, and you're a failure. Doubly so, because of your trying to propagate your own mistakes using information that should have had you reconsider. /pendantrysquared
Note - Analysts are to refrain from generating IOI reports that:
1) Include any form of unauthorized PII
2) Include public reaction to DHS programs, policies and procedures unless they are operationally relevant (e.g., long wait times at TSA checkpoints)
3) Focus on individuals' First Amendment-protected activities unless they are operationally relevant (e.g., protest shuts down I-95 - in which case the report should focus on impact to operations and not the subject of the protest)
4) Overview proposed legislation or legal challenges on enacted legislation
5) Have an obvious political bias or agenda
6) Are predictive or futuristic