[governance] FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet - reply by February 10

[Riaz K Tayob]

[If this were a developing country...?]

Published on Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Common Dreams 
<http://www.commondreams.org>


    FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet


      'Scraping' social network postings including Facebook and Twitter

- Common Dreams staff

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-3

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted a 
'Request for Information (RFI)' online last week seeking companies to 
build a social network monitoring system for the FBI. The 12-page 
document 
<https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c65777356334dab8685984fa74bfd636&tab=core&_cview=1> 
(.pdf) spells out what the bureau wants from such a system and invites 
potential contractors to reply by February 10, 2012.

It says the application should provide information about possible 
domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up 
technology".

It says the application should collect "open source" information and 
have the ability to:

  * Provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks
    including Facebook and Twitter.
  * Allow users to create new keyword searches.
  * Display different levels of threats as alerts on maps, possibly
    using color coding to distinguish priority. Google Maps 3D and Yahoo
    Maps are listed among the "preferred" mapping options.
  * Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data.
  * Immediately translate foreign language tweets into English.

It notes that agents need to "locate bad actors...and analyze their 
movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions". 
It also states that the bureau will use social media to create 
"pattern-of-life matrices" -- presumably logs of targets' daily routines 
-- that will aid law enforcement in planning operations.

* * *

/New Scientist/ magazine *reports* 
<http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/01/fbi-releases-plans-to-monitor.html> 
today:

"These tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a 
very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the 
effect of that on free speech in the US" -- Jennifer Lynch of the 
Electronic Frontier FoundationThe US Federal Bureau of Investigation has 
quietly released details of plans to continuously monitor the global 
output of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, offering a rare 
glimpse into an activity that the FBI and other government agencies are 
reluctant to discuss publicly. The plans show that the bureau believes 
it can use information pulled from social media sites to better respond 
to crises, and maybe even to foresee them. [...]

The use of the term "publicly available" suggests that Facebook and 
Twitter may be able to exempt themselves from the monitoring by making 
their posts private. But the desire of the US government to watch 
everyone may still have an unwelcome impact, warns Jennifer Lynch 
<https://www.eff.org/about/staff/jennifer-lynch> at the *Electronic 
Frontier Foundation* <https://www.eff.org/>, a San Francisco-based 
advocacy group.

Lynch says that many people post to social media in the expectation that 
only their friends and followers are reading, which gives them "the 
sense of freedom to say what they want without worrying too much about 
recourse," says Lynch. "But these tools that mine open source data and 
presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of 
privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US".

* * *

The BBC *reports* <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16738209>:

"Social networks are about connecting people with other people - if one 
person is the target of police monitoring, there will be a dragnet 
effect in which dozens, even hundreds, of innocent users also come under 
surveillance" -- Gus Hosein, Privacy InternationalThe FBI issued the 
request three weeks after the US Department of Homeland Security 
released a separate report into the privacy implications of monitoring 
social media websites.

It justified the principle of using information that users have provided 
and not opted to make private.

"Information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and 
voluntarily generated. Thus the opportunity not to provide information 
exists prior to the informational post by the user," it says.[...]

The London-based campaign group, *Privacy International* 
<https://www.privacyinternational.org/>, said it was worried about the 
consequences of such activities.

"Social networks are about connecting people with other people - if one 
person is the target of police monitoring, there will be a dragnet 
effect in which dozens, even hundreds, of innocent users also come under 
surveillance," said Gus Hosein, the group's executive director.

"It is not necessarily the case that the more information law 
enforcement officers have, the safer we will be.

"Police may well find themselves overwhelmed by a flood of personal 
information, information that is precious to those it concerns but 
useless for the purposes of crime prevention."

* * *

The /Fierce Government/ website *reports* 
<http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/social-media-primary-source-intel-says-fbi/2012-01-25> 
on 'refining raw social media into intelligence gold':

The notion that the future can be predicted by trends expressed in 
collective social media output is one that has gained increased currency 
in academic writing. A January analysis 
<http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2012/RAND_TR1161.pdf> 
(.pdf) published by the Rand Corp. of tweets using the #IranElection 
<https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23IranElection> hashtag during 2009 
and early 2010 found a correlation between appearance of swear words and 
protests. The study also found a shift that indicated the protest 
movement was losing momentum when swearing shifted from curses at the 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to curses at an opposition figure.

A March 2011 paper published in the /Journal of Computational Science/ 
(abstract 
<http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-79953102821&origin=inward&txGid=CaBklKH9fO5aqSmcUozjjdv%3a2>) 
also posited that movements of the Dow Jones Industrial Average could be 
predicted to an accuracy of 86.7 percent by changes of national mood 
reflected in Tweets. According <http://www.economist.com/node/18750604> 
to /The Economist/, British hedge fund Derwent Capital Markets has 
licensed the algorithm to guide the investments of a $41 million fund.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120126/17871d51/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t