Monday, January 9, 2012
Gawker
By Dec 27, 2011 6:28 PM
The Department of Homeland Security makes fake users on Twitter and Facebook with which to follow suspicious people. But what if you're not shifty enough to get your own government e-stalker? No problem: Just tweet "My cow collapsed, and now there's a human to animal infection outbreak among illegal immigrants."
That should bring heaps of DHS scrutiny, judging from a fresh lawsuit seeking access to the agency's data. In the suit, the privacy advocates at Electronic Privacy Information Center said DHS is monitoring social networks, blogs and message boards for users saying terms like "human to animal," "collapse," "infection," "outbreak," and "illegal immigrants." If you use these words and phrases, the government might follow you, record your activity, and share information about you with local, state, federal, and foreign governments. Since EPIC has thus far received no cooperation from the government and is suing for access, it's not clear how the nonprofit compiled its list of red-flag keywords. Hopefully its research did not involve human to animal contact, smuggling things through airport security, or bribing government employees!
Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Facebook, Twitter
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
UK Daily Mail
- Fake profiles used by Department of Homeland Security, says privacy group
- List of keywords flags 'danger' signal
- DHS may attempt to identify users from their accounts
- Keywords include 'virus', 'drill' and 'illegal immigrant'
The Department for Homeland Security announced plans to scan social networks for keywords such as 'human to animal', 'outbreak', 'strain' and 'drill', and then identify users, claims an online privacy group
Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS's 'watch' list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group.
The words which attract attention range from ones seemingly related to diseases or bioweapons such as 'human to animal' and 'outbreak' to other, more obscure words such as 'drill' and 'strain'.
The DHS also watches for words such as 'illegal immigrant'.
The DHS outlined plans to scans blogs, Twitter and Facebook for words such as 'illegal immigrant', 'outbreak', 'drill', 'strain', 'virus', 'recovery', 'deaths', 'collapse', 'human to animal' and 'trojan', according to an 'impact asssessment' document filed by the agency.
When its search tools net an account using the phrases, they record personal information.
It's still not clear how this information is used - and who the DHS shares it with...[Full Article]
Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Facebook, Homeland Security, keywords, Twitter, watchlist
Friday, November 4, 2011
McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.
At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians" also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.
From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt...[Full Article]
Labels: big brother, CIA, Facebook, monitoring, Twitter
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Federal agency concerned about riots breaking out in United States
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The wave of civil unrest that has swept the globe over the past year has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to step up its monitoring of Twitter and other social networks in a bid to pre-empt any sign of social dislocation within the United States.
“Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity,” reports the Associated Press.
Wagner announced that the federal agency would implement new guidelines that would focus on “gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes.”
Under the new framework, when the department receives information about a “potential threat,” it will then ask its contractors to look for relevant search references using “open source” information.
Although it’s somewhat naive to think that Homeland Security wasn’t already scanning the likes of Facebook and Twitter for social trends and signs of civil unrest, the fact that its now being announced publicly illustrates the increasing concern that riots which have hit the Middle East and Europe over the last 18 months will soon manifest themselves inside the United States.
Indeed, US law enforcement bodies are already scanning Twitter and Facebook for signs of unrest. Having launched a specialized unit to focus on gleaning clues from social media websites, the NYPD Disorder Control Unit recently brought together police from all five of the city’s boroughs to rehearse what the response would be “should out-of-control riots break out here”.
Social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter came in for harsh condemnation following the UK riots, with Prime Minister David Cameron advocating authorities have the power to shut down access during times of public disorder, mimicking the Communist Chinese system of Internet censorship, which is used to curtail political protests.
Although the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the only real expression of civil unrest in the United States thus far, a worsening economic climate almost guarantees the prospect of an increase in social disorder across the globe.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a prominent UN agency, warned yesterday that the world faces an imminent “dramatic downturn” in employment, and a new recession which in turn would lead to greater social unrest, particularly in European countries.
In preparation for potential riots inside the United States, the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute issued a report in November 2008 entitled Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development.
The report lays out the strategy for how authorities would respond to “purposeful domestic resistance,” wherein U.S. troops would be deployed domestically to counter civil unrest. The report was issued weeks after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, and included a potential “economic collapse” as one of the scenarios under which troops would be used inside the U.S. to restore order.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, monitoring, social media, surveillance, Twitter
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 3, 2011
The New York Times and the Washington Post have posted articles detailing a plan by the Pentagon to detect and track popular ideas on social networks.
They are not interested in what people think about Lady Gaga or the latest cooking recipes.
In 2005, it was reported that the Pentagon was adding anti-war groups and individuals to a terrorist database. A Defense Department document leaked to NBC provided a “first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.”
Northcom also has a unit dedicated to snooping on political activists.
In 2002, the Pentagon established CIFA, Counterintelligence Field Activity, by directive. Its size and budget were classified. CIFA created a database, TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice), to keep track of antiwar activists and individuals opposed to invading and bombing small defenseless countries. After a spate of bad PR, the government said CIFA was to be dismantled. It was later revealed that its operations were outsourced and privatized.
The Washington Post admits the DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – plan to hire programmers and researchers to build software to track “popular ideas” on social networks is political.
The plan “makes a certain amount of sense, if you think about how Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks have been used to broadcast the ideas of revolutionaries, protesters and other political figures over the past few years,” writes Hayley Tsukayama.
And, as the report highlights, DARPA could also use the social networks to identify threats. It suggests, for example, that the agency could look into incidences of several people in the same area posting messages about rumors that a wanted individual is hiding nearby.
Or where the next demonstration against the Federal Reserve will be held so agents provocateurs and informers can be dispatched.
“Social networks can allow the military not only to follow but also to shape the action,” writes David Streitfeld for the New York Times.
In 2009, the Pentagon released a “Force Protection Advisory” about “planned protests at all Federal Reserve Banks and office locations within the United States.” The “advisory” went out to Northcom and the FBI.
On November 22, 2008, Alex Jones led a rally at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas Texas. The Dallas protest is specifically mentioned in the official Army document. Ron Paul’s brother was also in attendance.
Labels: Facebook, Pentagon, Twitter
Friday, April 15, 2011
CIA on Facebook & Twitter: Wayne Madsen on info warfare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3WY7QtVnyI
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Apr 15, 2011
As pro-reform uprisings continue across the Arab world, the U.S. is stepping up its influence with anti-government activists around the world. America is using new mobile phone technology to help protest groups - and manipulating social network websites as well as Twitter with fake idenities - to spread dissent and encourage regime-change by influencing media coverage.
RT on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
RT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RT_com
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Facebook, Twitter, video, Wayne Madsen
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The U.S. government's new system to replace the five color-coded terror alerts will have two levels of warnings — elevated and imminent — that will be relayed to the public only under certain circumstances for limited periods of time, sometimes using Facebook and Twitter, according to a draft Homeland Security Department plan obtained by The Associated Press...[Full Article]
[Webmaster - Yet again, ratcheting up the fear level. They're priming us for another False Flag.]
Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Facebook, terror alert, Twitter
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Emails recently released from a Right-To-Know request show that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security monitored the twitter activity of law-abiding citizens.
The emails, obtained by the website PARevolution.com, show that a private firm used twitter to collect intelligence on anti-war protests as a part of their contract with the department...
[Full Article]Labels: big brother, Department of Homeland Security, Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Homeland Security, Pennsylvania, surveillance, Twitter
Thursday, April 15, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — That Twitter message you just posted about your ham sandwich might now become part of history.
Twitter is donating its archives of tweets to the Library of Congress, going back to the first one posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006. It wasn't a profound moment, and Dorsey didn't come close to Twitter's 140-character limit for messages. He simply posted "Jack," according to the Library of Congress' archives.
Twitter and the Library of Congress announced their partnership Wednesday...
Labels: information, Library of Congress, privacy, tweets, Twitter
Thursday, March 18, 2010
It seems U.S. law enforcement wants to be your friend on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The good news? Personal privacy may actually be making a comeback.
It seems 2010 may be the year personal privacy makes a comeback -- that, or it's taking its final breath before it sinks into the tarpits. Every week brings news of some new affront to our personal data, accompanied by a backlash. Lately these stories have been bubbling up on an almost daily basis.
It started late last year, when Facebook arbitrarily changed its default privacy settings to make more of your profile information accessible to Google and other Facebook users. You could of course change those settings, but most people didn't. That earned Facebook a class-action suit and ongoing scrutiny by the FTC...
Labels: Facebook, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet, privacy, surveillance, Twitter
In the slides of what appears to be a DOJ PowerPoint presentation from Aug. 2009 titled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites," the major social networking sites are examined for their utility and tendency to cooperate.
Facebook is described as "Often cooperative with emergency requests."
MySpace "requires a search warrant for private messages/bulletins less than 181 days old."
Under the Twitter heading, they list the "good news" that "most Twitter content is public," but then go on to list several bits of "bad news" like "Stated policy of producing data only in response to legal process" and "no contact phone number."
And while the DOJ had very little to say about getting info from LinkedIn, they do point out that the business-centric network "can be used to identify experts" and to "check background of defense experts." Which is kind of scary, considering how they also point out that "profile information is not checked for reliability."
Labels: Department of Justice, DOJ, Facebook, Justice Department, MySpace, Twitter
Facebook is more cooperative than Twitter Inc. in handing over private user data to the authorities; and that Friend you just added may well be a federal investigator acting undercover.
Those are just a couple of the juicy tidbits the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has secured. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the EFF issued a request to six federal agencies to retrieve documents detailing how they're using the Internet for investigations. When none of the agencies complied, EFF launched a lawsuit.
As a result, EFF has received documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Justice Criminal Division, both of which provide information on how officials should and should not be using the Internet for surveillance purposes.
A 38-page training course from 2009, released from the IRS, for example, provides a breakdown of how to use the "Advanced Search" tool on Google to locate taxpayer info, as well as an overview of how to use Google Street View...
Labels: big brother, EFF, Facebook, FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, intern, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, privacy, surveillance, Twitter
WASHINGTON — Criminals beware! US law enforcement authorities may be stalking you on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter.
Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveal some of the ways the FBI and tax agents are allowed to use social networks for investigative purposes.
The documents were posted this week on the website of the EFF after being obtained through a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the San Francisco-based electronic rights group and the Samuelson Clinic of the University of California, Berkeley...
Labels: EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Justice Department, MySpace, privacy, surveillance, Twitter
Friday, March 12, 2010
Location-based services have superseded the real-time web as the driving force behind internet innovation this year.
Internet giants like Google, Twitter and Facebook are all honing their location-based services. These bigger companies are lining up alongside a healthy serving of smaller internet start-ups (think Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and Booyah) to provide their consumers with comprehensive geolocation services.
Labels: big brother, Facebook, GPS, Internet, personal Information, privacy, Twitter
Twitter already reveals to the rest of the world what you're doing and what you're thinking, and now the microblogging site can let everyone know where you are as well.
A new feature rolled out this week means Twitter users have the option of including their location when they tweet via a tracking tool they can turn on or off.
When the tool is activated, tweets will link to a Google map of the area the user is in.
The growing trend for web services to broadcast people's whereabouts – already picked up by Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt – is expected to be followed by Facebook soon too.
Avid Twitter users have been warned to be careful about how and when they harness the power of the new technology, which works by shadowing people through their web browsers.
The brains behind the microblogging mecca reckon the tool will make Twitter more useful for anyone looking for real-time information.
Labels: big brother, Internet, privacy, Twitter
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