Federal Agents Urged to 'Friend' People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Thu Oct 21 02:27:01 PDT 2010


http://scitech.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=24036&external=528097.proteus.fma&pageNum=-1

Federal Agents Urged to 'Friend' People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals

Oct 14, 2010 9:42 AM EDT

A privacy watchdog has uncovered a government memo that encourages federal
agents to befriend people on a variety of social networks, to take advantage
of their readiness to share -- and to spy on them. In response to a Freedom
of Information request, the government released a handful of documents,
including a May 2008 memo detailing how social-networking sites are exploited
by the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS).

As of Thursday morning, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg had not
commented on the report, which details the official government program to spy
via social networking. Other websites the government is spying on include
Twitter, MySpace, Craigslist and Wikipedia, according to the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed the FOIA request.

"Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuel a need to have a large group of
'friends' link to their pages, and many of these people accept cyber-friends
that they don't even know," stated one of the documents obtained by the EFF.
"This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life
of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities,"
it said.

According to the EFF, this memo -- which specifically details how the
government evaluates potential citizen requests -- suggests there's nothing
to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date offhand comment in a
status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full investigation. 

With this revelation, the government joins a growing list of groups using
social-networking sites for purposes other than social networking. As these
sites have gained popularity, scammers and spammers have become rampant, and
hackers are increasingly turning to networks such as Facebook to spread
viruses and Trojan Horses.

The EFF also uncovered efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to
monitor social media during the inauguration of President Obama. According to
the documents, the DHS collected a massive amount of data on individuals and
organizations explicitly tied to the event.

The DHS notably attempted to ensure that its use of social networks was
appropriate while gathering data online. The newly released documents cite
the Fair Information Practices Principles, a 2008 policy memo by the
Department of Homeland Security's chief privacy officer that set guidelines
for ensuring online privacy during the collection of information.

Another government agency, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
denies using social networks to spy on people.

"USCIS does not permit agency personnel to attempt to 'friend' immigration
petitioners and their beneficiaries on social networks in an effort to reveal
fraud."

Still, the EFF worries that the DHS may be taking things too far. "While it
is laudable to see DHS discussing the Fair Information Practice Principles as
part of the design for such a project, the breadth of sites targeted is
concerning," the watchdog group wrote on its website.

Among the networks specifically cited for analysis "were general social
networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr, as well as
sites that focus specifically on certain demographic groups such as MiGente
and BlackPlanet, news sites such as NPR, and political commentary sites
DailyKos," the EFF wrote.

For more information, read the full report at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. 

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