German Spy Agency Seeks Millions To Monitor Social Networks

itwbennett writes: Germany's foreign intelligence agency reportedly wants to spend €300 million (about $375 million) in the next five years on technology that would let it spy in real time on social networks outside of Germany, and decrypt and monitor encrypted Internet traffic. The agency, which already spent €6.22 million in preparation for this online surveillance push, also wants to use the money to set up an early warning system for cyber attacks, the report said (Google translation of German original). A prototype is expected to be launched next June with the aim of monitoring publicly available data on Twitter and blogs.

Comments

Movie about Edward Snowden

[Futurepower(R)]

I just saw Citizenfour. It's interesting to know how the news about Snowden got started. The movie makes the point that those who take away privacy do that because they want control.

In my opinion, destructiveness toward healthy society is an outbreak of symptoms of mental conflict.

They'll catch only stupid criminals/terrorists

[knorthern knight]

Only dumb criminals/terrorists would use social networks to plan crimes. Remember how Osama Bin Laden dropped out of sight after 9/11? No cellphones, no landlines, no email, etc. Just communicating via messangers. It took the best intelligence services on the planet years to find him. After the first few splashy cases hit the news, criminals/terrorists will go back to "sneakernet", and the social-network monitoring infrastructure will go to waste.