WSJ: FBI proposes greater social media surveillance after mass shootings in Texas & Ohio!!!
The WSJ reported the FBI is proposing a more aggressive social media surveillance plan to detect possible threats on social media that would then later force user privacy and whether it’s at risk.
What exactly will this allow the FBI to do and what is the FBI going to do with this information?
The FBI has noticed the ability for certain people to congregate on social media & come together to bring out certain identities and carry out certain goals.
ISIS used this to carry out radical Islamists terrorist attacks.
The FBI would monitor when events may happen where they happen & who might be involved. There amping up the efforts to do early detection of these kinds of emergency situations. What is the FBI detecting? The FBI is trying to creat in-depth profiles on what they call publicly available information.
Generally, Facebook & Twitter are calling it mass surveillance which is not allowed on their platforms even by federal agencies. Then why has Facebook sold users private data to 1000s of applications and made billions?
Facebook wants to create profiles on people who are up to suspicious activities. Who’s going to define what suspicious activities are? Is it when people post a manifesto and did or didn’t act on it. There is this debate with individual privacy and communal security.
Once you give the government or the FBI to start policing you on line it very is dangerous & all bets are off; especially since the government and FBI can’t be trusted by Americans. The current FBI Director Christopher Wray is still protecting classified information from FOIA requests. There is no transparency with the FBI and many of the corrupted people who worked with the fired former FBI Director James Comey are still in place to do major harm to any American citizen through FISA warrants as they did in the FISA Abuse Scandal involving Obama & his co-conspirators like Brennen Tapper & Comey etc.
It worries privacy professionals and privacy advocates and everyone on social media who don’t have malicious intentions. Would the government create a key that would unlock all the encryption on private messaging?
This is extremely troubling that now the FBI wants to monitor everyone on social media platforms. Below are two articles to read. ~ Natalie
The FBI is looking for a partner to collect data from your social media profiles, which could pit it against new privacy policies Facebook agreed to as part of its $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
A request for proposal posted on Aug. 8 reveals that the FBI wants to hire a third party contractor to help it scrape to social media data “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The document was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
“With increased use of social media platforms by subjects of current FBI investigations and individuals that pose a threat to the United States, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other Social media platforms in a timely fashion,” the FBI wrote in its request. “Consequently, the FBI needs near real time access to a full range of social media exchanges in order to obtain the most current information available in furtherance of its law enforcement and intelligence missions.”
While the request is from last month, it’s even more relevant in light of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, and President Donald Trump’s call to better use social media to detect and stop mass shooters before they can go on a rampage .
The FBI’s request could, in theory, violate a ban against the use of Facebook data for surveillance services that Facebook agreed to as part of a $5 billion FTC settlement last month. That said, the FBI envisions this as an “early alerting tool in order to mitigate multifaceted threats, while ensuring all privacy and civil liberties compliance requirements are met.”
The new data security program that Facebook is required to create as a result of the settlement could put the social media giant between the FTC and the FBI. While the FTC wants Facebook users’ data to be more private and for Facebook to adopt a better privacy policy, the FBI appears to be hungry for the data and is now asking for access to Facebook and other social media platforms’ data to determine possible threats.
Digital Trends reached out to the FBI, Facebook, Twitter, and the FTC for comment but have not yet received a response.
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— Read on www.digitaltrends.com/news/fbi-wants-social-media-data/
(CNN) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly been searching for private contractors who could gather and feed to law enforcement tremendous amounts of user data straight from social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The U.S. government needs “real-time access to a full range of social media exchanges” to better fight terrorist groups and domestic threats, the FBI said in its request for bids, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
But the FBI’s effort to gain far-reaching visibility into the social media activities of both Americans and foreigners risks clashing with other parts of the federal government that have sought to clamp down on Silicon Valley for data breaches, privacy violations, and other cases in which user information was shared without consent.
The FBI’s search began in early July. It calls for providers that can give law enforcement agents advanced warning of violent incidents as well as the ability to summon a given social media user’s ID numbers, IP addresses and telephone numbers if necessary.
This is not the first time the FBI has sought access to a wide array of social media data. In 2016, the agency announced it had hired the social media analysis company Dataminrto allow law enforcement to “search the complete Twitter firehose, in near real-time, using customizable filters.” Dataminr, which looks at open source information only, is also contracted by media outlets including CNN.
It was not immediately clear whether the FBI aims to expand on Dataminr’s capabilities with the new contract, or whether it is already doing some kind of monitoring of Facebook and Instagram. The FBI declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the procurement process.
Still, the volume and depth of information sought by the FBI highlights the agency’s interest in monitoring internet users on a broad basis. Under the FBI’s proposal, winning bidders must help the government “proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States.”
Civil liberties advocates warned that the contract could be easily abused.
“This proposal invites dragnet surveillance that history shows will disproportionately harm immigrants, communities of color, and activists, and it invites profit-seeking firms to violate Facebook and Twitter rules designed to keep users safe,” said Matt Cagle, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. “Treating social media users like suspects won’t make us more safe, but it will make us less free.”
Social media platforms routinely provide data to law enforcement on specific individuals. But that process relies on law enforcement making individualized requests or subpoenas.
A Twitter spokesperson said the company’s terms for third parties prohibit developers from “allowing law enforcement — or any other entity — to use Twitter data for surveillance purposes. Period.”
Twitter restricted the amount of information Dataminr could offer to law enforcement in 2016, after critics including the ACLUbrought such use to Twitter’s attention.
Facebook declined to comment, but referred CNN Business to its existing app developer policies, which prohibit Facebook users’ information from being shared with “unauthorized” parties.
“For example, don’t use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance,” the Facebook policy reads.
The FBI procurement effort could be complicated by recent moves by Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and others to step up privacy standards at tech companies.
Last month, the FTC announced a record-breaking $5 billion settlement with Facebook over its leakage of user data to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The settlement requiresFacebook to restructure its board and provide greater oversight over company decisions, though critics of the deal argued it was far too weak and did not do enough to hold CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally accountable.
The FTC declined to comment on the FBI contract. But in a statement, the FTC said its settlement requires Facebook to protect names, geolocation data, phone numbers, IP addresses and other forms of so-called “covered information.”
“According to the order, Facebook needs to protect Covered Information under its privacy program,” the FTC said. “It is not limited to Covered Information that is subject to a privacy setting or that is set to be non-public.”
Meanwhile, Senate lawmakers have been trying to hammer out national-level privacy legislation that could clarify what internet users’ rights are in relation to the massive tech companies who mine their behavioral information to sustain powerful positions in online advertising and e-commerce.