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| Homeland Security announced plans to monitor social media sites in February 2011. (photo: Johann Helgason/Shutterstock) |
28 December 11
Homeland Security spies on Facebook and Twitter users, recording the
activity of people who search for terms like "human to animal,"
"collapse" and "infection," according to an online privacy advocacy
group that has sued to peruse the agency's data.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) says
Homeland Security announced plans to monitor social media sites in
February.
"The initiatives were designed to gather information
from 'online forums, blogs, public websites, and message boards,' to
store and analyze the information gathered, and then to 'disseminate
relevant and appropriate de-identified information to federal, state,
local, and foreign governments and private sector partners,'"
according to the federal complaint filed in Washington, D.C.
"Previously, DHS had developed surveillance
initiatives of public chats and other online forums concerning
specific events, such as the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the
2010 Winter Olympics, and the April 2010 BP oil spill," EPIC also
claims.
As part of the initiative, the agency would "establish
[fictitious] usernames and passwords" to spy on users and record
their activities based on a number of search terms, including "human
to animal," "collapse," "outbreak," and "illegal immigrants," the
complaint says.
Homeland Security regularly plans to report their
findings to "federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, foreign, or
international government partners," the privacy group says.
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