NPR.org – What The FBI Wants In A Social Media Monitoring App

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

0


David thought you would be interested in this story: What The FBI Wants In A Social Media Monitoring App
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/01/31/146090425/what-the-fbi-wants-in-a-social-media-monitoring-app?sc=emaf

So now it seems the FBI will be bulking up their ability to gather intelligence from publicly posted material on sites like Facebook and Twitter. They are asking the private sector to help create an App that can track certain keywords and trending topics on the internet in order to prevent certain “events” or “crises” that may arise in regards to national security. In addition to tracking keywords this application would map these trends with geo-location software that pinpoints the area or region from which it is originating. The most troubling to me is that the FBI says that it wants to use the App in order to “predict future actions taken by bad actors”. Although this seems like a rather benign comment, I think that it is so general that it may have the potential of encompassing groups such as Occupy Wall Street in the future depending on how the FBI defines “a bad actor.

Posted in: Uncategorized