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After FOIA, Homeland Security Releases Social Media Monitoring Guides

Posted by Unknown on from the go-forth-and-get-yourself-on-a-list dept.

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."

10 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Most Transparent Ever by Bodhammer · · Score: 1

    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."
    1. Re:Most Transparent Ever by Cryacin · · Score: 1

      1. Carefully monitor citizens communications.
      2. Send dissenters and anarchists to Room 101 for retraining.
      3. ???
      4. Profit

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  2. Good News... by mythosaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...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.

    1. Re:Good News... by Animats · · Score: 1

      Right. After reading through all this, it's not clear why Homeland Security bothers. A customized news feed from Google would be about as useful and much cheaper.

      These "media" guys apparently just send out little bulletins. There's no indication that they're tied into the operational side in any useful way. Homeland Security presumably has an operations center that handles active incidents. But the media guys don't seem to use any info from there, even a list of active incidents. If the operational center got a report of an explosion somewhere, one would expect that the "media" team would immediately get that info, then start looking for info about the incident appearing on social networks and tie that to the incident, both for immediate and later use.

    2. Re:Good News... by bentcd · · Score: 1

      Right. After reading through all this, it's not clear why Homeland Security bothers. A customized news feed from Google would be about as useful and much cheaper.

      Homeland Security isn't about doing things "cheap". In fact that would pretty much completely defeat the purpose.

      The pork barrel used to be about building expensive green kit to kill the commies with, now it's about harassing citizens just enough so that they think you're protecting them from dangerous men with beards. There's lots of money in the pork barrel and the more expensively you can manage to do your job the more money will get poured into it.

      --
      sigs are hazardous to your health
    3. Re:Good News... by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      There's nothing expensive described in this process other than perhaps the labor. The workstations are older run-of-the-mill Dell machines using off-the-shelf TV capture cards for grabbing news tidbits.

      The government may be full of pork, but there's no obvious waste described in the document.

      It's just an overly long policy document.

  3. There's a parrallel world of laws by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!
  4. Cyber Mouth Breathers by d'baba · · Score: 1

    They keep their Daily Watch Log in a Google spreadsheet. Exportable to Excel, of course.

  5. Re:Fucking idiot by erikkemperman · · Score: 1

    As I use NoScript, I couldn't help but find the amount of trackers on their site rather shocking: GAnalytics, Scorecard, Facebook, Newrelic AND Topsy, for good measure. It seems they are interpreting "freedom of information" rather liberally and include the freedom to fork their visitor's information over to PR/marketing droids wholesale.

    It seems to me they are more likely an asset to DHS and their feeble social media monitoring scheme than they damage it by telling us about it.

    --
    Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
  6. Here's their spam filter by Sean · · Score: 1

    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