Lawmakers concerned by US social media monitoring

Πηγή: Physorg
By Chris Lefkow (AFP)
Feb 17 2012

Department officials defended the practice, meanwhile, at a congressional hearing, saying they monitor social media mostly for "situational awareness" about breaking news events and adhere to strict privacy guidelines.

Representative Patrick Meehan, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, said he backs "intelligence collection within the rules of law" but has free speech concerns.

"In my view, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating private citizens' comments could have a chilling effect on individual's privacy rights and people's freedom of speech and dissent against their government," Meehan said.

"I fully recognize that if an individual willingly uses Facebook, Twitter, or the comments section of a newspaper website, they in effect forfeit their right to an expectation of privacy," the Republican from Pennsylvania said.

"However, other private individuals reading your Facebook status updates is different than the Department of Homeland Security reading them, analyzing them and possibly disseminating and collecting them for future purposes," he said.

Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, said she was disturbed by monitoring of social media for reaction to government policies or programs and that it should not be a "political operation."

Richard Chavez, the director of Homeland Security's Office of Operations Coordination and Planning, told the committee that the monitoring program was not being used for that purpose.

"I am not aware of any information we have gathered on government proposals," he said.



The monitoring of social media by Homeland Security came to light following a lawsuit filed in December by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. It is being carried out under an $11 million contract with General Dynamics.

Mary Ellen Callahan, Homeland Security's chief privacy officer, told the committee that strict protections for privacy and civil liberties have been built into the program.

"If you can't do it offline, you can't do it online," Callahan said.

"We don't collect information on individuals," she said. "We do not monitor them.

"But individuals may be the first person at the scene," she said. "They may go and report there's been a train derailment in Michigan."

Chavez said the monitoring was of "keywords associated with events" such as natural disasters and potential security threats but not of individuals.

The Department of Homeland Security is not the only US government agency interested in mining social media.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation asked information technology contractors last month about the feasibility of building a similar monitoring tool.

The FBI said it is seeking an "open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application solution" for its Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC).

"Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations," the January 19 request from the FBI said.

The FBI said the tool "must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identity, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

Homeland Security reviews social media guidelines

Πηγή: AP
By P. SOLOMON BANDA

Oct 31 2011

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- The wave of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East that have overturned three governments in the past year have prompted the U.S. government to begin developing guidelines for culling intelligence from social media networks, a top Homeland Security official said Monday.

Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity.

"We're still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source," she said. "How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?"

Wagner said the department is establishing guidelines on gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes. Wagner says those protocols are being developed under strict laws meant to prevent spying on U.S. citizens and protect privacy, including rules dictating the length of time the information can be stored and differences between domestic and international surveillance.

Wagner said the Homeland Security department, established after the 9/11 attacks, is not actively monitoring any social networks. But when the department receives information about a potential threat, contractors are then asked to look for certain references within "open source" information, which is available to anyone on the Internet.

The challenge, she said, is to develop guidelines for collecting and analyzing information so that it provides law enforcement officials with meaningful intelligence.

"I can post anything on Facebook, is that valid? If 20 people are tweeting the same thing, then maybe that is valid," she said. "There are just a lot of questions that we are sort of struggling with because it's a newly emerging (issue)."

Wagner was in Colorado Springs to deliver a speech at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense, a conference that included defense contractors and the military.

Aside from discussing the use of technology in unrest that has led to regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, she delivered a speech that addressed the way the department operates, saying that its crucial elements include a nationwide network of 72 fusion centers that gather and analyze reports of suspicious activity, a new National Terrorism Advisory System that replaces the color coded alert system with one that provides more information about a threat, and a "See Something, Say Something" campaign that encourages citizens to report suspicious activity.

She also said another key program involves training hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers across the country in filling out suspicious activity reports.

Homeland security chief Janet Napolitano denies knowing about “Fast and Furious” during operation

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

Πηγή: Chron
By Puneet Kollipara

Sep. 13 2011

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday denied knowing about the existence of the controversial gun-tracking Operation Fast and Furious while it was ongoing.

Napolitano told a Senate panel she didn’t find out about the operation until around the time of a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s murder in December in Arizona.

“Given the high level of information-sharing between departments, were you made aware of the operation while it was underway?” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“No,” said Napolitano, who was testifying under oath before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Multiple officials who played leading roles in the gun-tracking operation were reassigned within the Justice Department or resigned in late August after months of investigation into Fast and Furious, an joint federal law-enforcement operation meant to take down Mexican cartels that were importing U.S.-bought weapons and shipping drugs to the United States.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed illegal sales of firearms to straw purchasers to occur and sought to trace them back to cartels. Napolitano’s department doesn’t have jurisdiction over ATF, which is located in the DOJ.

The government lost track of roughly 2,000 firearms throughout the operation. Several were later found at the scenes of Mexican drug crimes, according to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Two of the guns were found in December at the scene of the murder of the U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry.

The House oversight committee is conducting one investigation, led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Issa, his committee and Grassley are seeking to find out what high-ranking DOJ officials knew and when they knew it.

The DOJ’s inspector general is also investigating; no date has been set for the release of the IG report.

The FBI is still investigating Terry’s murder and has conducted interviews and forensics at the scene, agency Director Robert Mueller told the committee. Mueller declined to give further information, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.

Napolitano said she couldn’t remember when she found out that guns from the Fast and Furious operation were at the scene of Terry’s death.