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FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

zdnet.com

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Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#23
post #20
post #8

Someone else raised this point elsewhere but...so what? Monitoring public information is their job. I'd be disappointed if they weren't monitoring those services. If you post public information, it's publicly consumable, including by government intelligence services. If you have a problem with that, consider that the issue might be your choice to post information publicly that you don't want the FBI to see, rather th…

The difference as far as I can see is that as a startup would I be granted access to all the data? AFAIK facebook terms say I cannot scrape the information and in the past they had forced a hacker to delete the database that was collected by scraping this info. This sets a dangerous precedent. By letting a government authority to oversee the activity, even if considered public, is still personal. Its a step closer to…

What in the article suggests that these social networking sites are relaxing their terms for the FBI?

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#24
post #20
post #8

Someone else raised this point elsewhere but...so what? Monitoring public information is their job. I'd be disappointed if they weren't monitoring those services. If you post public information, it's publicly consumable, including by government intelligence services. If you have a problem with that, consider that the issue might be your choice to post information publicly that you don't want the FBI to see, rather th…

The difference as far as I can see is that as a startup would I be granted access to all the data? AFAIK facebook terms say I cannot scrape the information and in the past they had forced a hacker to delete the database that was collected by scraping this info. This sets a dangerous precedent. By letting a government authority to oversee the activity, even if considered public, is still personal. Its a step closer to…

The terms restrict scraping without permission. I'm pretty sure that the FBI would be able to find a way to get Fb's permission. And for good reason. Again, it's public information. No harm done.

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#26

I'm more interested in seeing what they end up paying for this software when it's built. I'm sure the right couple of geeks from HN could do it in a few months for fairly little; I'm sure the FBI will end up paying many millions. The FBI would be smart to learn from DARPA and take a prize approach on projects like this. "First company that builds X to our satisfaction will get $1mm." I imagine it'd save them a ton.

Doesn't Palantir already do that?

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#27
post #23
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference as far as I can see is that as a startup would I be granted access to all the data? AFAIK facebook terms say I cannot scrape the information and in the past they had forced a hacker to delete the database that was collected by scraping this info. This sets a dangerous precedent. By letting a government authority to oversee the activity, even if considered public, is still personal. Its a step closer to…

What in the article suggests that these social networking sites are relaxing their terms for the FBI?

Good point. The two paragraphs at the bottom state that the FBI's app will likely only use public information. Profile set to private? You're golden.
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