FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

tl;dr: FBI wants to have its own version of what every startup that scrapes data from social media sites have been doing already, and the only change is that "keywords" and "trends" are now called "threats".

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#5

Post by iamdann » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 4:30 AM UTC

I'm sure there's a startup somewhere building an app for that.

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#6

Post by ender7 » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 4:30 AM UTC

Once again, the Onion got there first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0

I will start worrying when companies are legally required to let the FBI trawl through the databases without a warrant. It's hard to make a law against scraping public information.

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#7

Post by SoftwareMaven » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 4:35 AM UTC

I assumed they already did this. As long as the data is public, there's not much you can do. As always, be cognizant of your online persona!

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#8

Post by cheald » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 4:39 AM UTC

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 than the fact that the FBI is looking at it.

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#9

Post by smokeyj » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 4:49 AM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #6

Once again, the Onion got there first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0 I will start worrying when companies are legally required to let the FBI trawl through the databases without a warrant. It's hard to make a law against scraping public information.

Look up NSL.

Re: FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

#10

Post by joshontheweb » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 5:15 AM UTC

I figured they were already doing this. Once I heard that Library of Congress was archiving tweets I assumed they either were or would be monitoring that information. I always heard that they have computers listening for keywords on phone conversations also. I never knew if it was true or a urban legend.