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."

US State Department Expanding Use of Social Media

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland gestures during a meeting in Skopje, Macedonia,

Πηγή: VOAnews
By Scott Stearns

Jan 6 2012

U.S. diplomats are expanding their use of social media during what the Obama administration is calling 21st Century Statecraft Month.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stood at the same podium she uses every day in the Carl Rowan briefing room. But the questions Friday came not from the State Department press corps. They came from users of the social media site Twitter tweeting to the hashtag #AskState.

Nuland's answers were compressed, translated, and tweeted on the State Department's 10 official Twitter feeds in Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Urdu.

It is part of what she says is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's drive to expand U.S. diplomatic outreach.

"Secretary Clinton has made the use of new technology and innovation a key part of our foreign policy agenda around the world. So here at State and at [US]AID, we are adopting new approaches to meet the diplomatic and development challenges that we see,” said Nuland.

Nuland said the State Department has 193 social media accounts, about 100 of which are associated with specific embassies.

"Part of this effort is making sure that we are making full use of digital networks and technologies to more quickly and more directly engage people and audiences at home and abroad,” said Nuland.

Next week, the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince will hold a Twitter question-and-answer session about recovery efforts two years after the earthquake there, and the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna will hold a virtual town hall about nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear safety.

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.

Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring?

Πηγή: Pitpi
Sep 11 2011


After analyzing over 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring. Conversations about revolution often preceded major events on the ground, and social media carried inspiring stories of protest across international borders.

Focused mainly on Tunisia and Egypt, this research included creating a unique database of information collected from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The research also included creating maps of important Egyptian political Websites, examining political conversations in the Tunisian blogosphere, analyzing more than 3 million Tweets based on key-words used, and tracking which countries thousands of individuals Tweeted from during the revolutions. The result is that for the first time we have evidence confirming social media’s critical role in the Arab Spring.

The contributors include Philip Howard, Muzammil Hussain, Will Mari, and Marwa Mazaid at the University of Washington, Deen Freelon at American University, and Aiden Duffy at Amazon Web Services.

Opening Closed Regimes

Two Killed in Mexico over Gang-Related Social Media Posts

Πηγή: Techland
By Graeme McMillan

Sep. 16 2011

Watch what you say on the Internet, because it really could get you killed.

Two dead bodies were discovered hanging from a bridge in the Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo this week, accompanied by a placard with the message, "This is going to happen to all Internet snitches. Pay attention, I'm watching you." It's believed the two were murdered after speaking out about drug gang activity on a social media site.

While threats and violence against journalists is sadly not uncommon for those covering the Mexican drug war—more than 80 journalists have been murdered as a result of their coverage since 2000, according to Reporters Without Borders—this may be the first time that "civilians" have been murdered specifically for what they'd written online, a horrifying new development in an already terrible situation.

Study confirms social media’s revolutionary role in Arab Spring

Πηγή: Digital Trends
By Andrew Couts
Sep. 13 2011


A study from the University of Washington shows that social media, like Twitter and Facebook, did, indeed, play a major role in sparking the Arab Spring revolutions that engulfed the Middle East and Northern Africa this year.

Social media really did play an instrumental role in the wave of “Arab Spring” revolutions that swept across parts of the Middle East and Northern Africa earlier this year, a new study has found.

Researchers at the University of Washington sifted through more than 3 million tweets, countless hours of YouTube videos and gigabytes of blogs to find out whether the Internet, and social media services like Twitter and Facebook really played the revolutionary role many claimed they did.

According to the study, online chatter about revolution often began just before actual revolutions took place. And social media also served as an outlet for citizens of the region to tell their stories of revolution, which played an inspirational role for neighboring countries, the study found.

“Our evidence suggests that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising,” said Philip Howard, a University of Washington communications professor and the study’s leader. “People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom.”

In Egypt, where the Arab Spring blossomed, Howard and his team found that the number of tweets that mentioned revolution in that country exploded from 2,300 per day to more than 230,000 per day. The number of videos, Facebook updates and blog posts about government opposition also rose dramatically.

Because Twitter users can send updates from any mobile phone, Howard says that platform offers the “clearest evidence of where individuals engaging in democratic conversations were located during the revolutions,” since many people in the region do not have standard Internet access, but most do have a cellphone.

The study also found that government efforts to cut off access to Internet and cell phone service likely caused an increase in activism, especially in Egypt where access was shut down for five daysbefore being restored.

“Recent events show us that the public sense of shared grievance and potential for change can develop rapidly,” said Howard. “These dictators for a long time had many political enemies, but they were fragmented. So opponents used social media to identify goals, build solidarity and organize demonstrations.”

More recently, social media helped fuel days of riots in London and elsewhere in the UK. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded by saying that citizens who organize uprisings on social networks should be banned from accessing them — a suggestion that evoked ridicule from the notoriously authoritarian Iranian government. That idea was later discarded following a meeting between the British government, Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry.

Cameron Ponders Social Media Ban For Rioters

Πηγή: Huffington Post

8/11/11 09:04 PM ET



British Prime Minister David Cameron said the government will look into whether rioters should be banned from using social media like Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry Messenger to organize violent acts.

"Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media," Cameron told Parliament during an emergency session on Thursday. "Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill."

"And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

"So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

BlackBerry's simple and largely cost-free messaging service was used by rioters to co-ordinate their activities, Cameron's office said.

Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May will hold meetings with Twitter, Facebook and Research In Motion (RIM), to discuss their responsibilities, the Guardian reported

Cameron also said that British businesses, homeowners and communities affected by looting, arson and other violence over the last several days will be eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance and other aid to rebuild in the wake of the worst rioting in decades.

"We will help you repair the damage, get your businesses back up and running and support your communities," Cameron said Thursday.

Cameron said any homeowner or business that suffered damage to or loss of buildings or property as a result of rioting can seek compensation under the country's riot damages act, even if uninsured.

He said while claims normally must be received within 14 days, the period will be extended to 42 days.

"We will not put up with this in our country," Cameron said Thursday as London police continued to conduct overnight raids to arrest suspects in the looting, arson and violence that began Saturday.

"We will not allow a culture of fear to exist in our streets. We will do whatever it takes to restore order and rebuild our communities."

Besides £200 million (about $320.4 million) expected to be paid out in insurance claims, £20 million (about $32 million) pledged to get businesses back up and running and deferred tax programs, Cameron announced plans to develop a national campaign by October to combat gang violence to help fix Britain's "broken society."

The prime minister spoke during an emergency session of Parliament following an evening of relative calm in Britain's capital, except for some isolated incidents.

More than 100 warrants are being executed to round up suspects that may be behind some of the country's worst rioting in decades, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh.

Police have already arrested about 1,200 people nationally since the violence began on Saturday, and hundreds have been charged. Hundreds more people are expected to be in custody by the end of Thursday.

Prosecutors are working round the clock to deal with those who have already been arrested, said Dominic Valitis, a CBC freelance correspondent in London.

Valitis pointed out that London newspapers have identified everyone from a schoolboy, to a hairdresser, teacher and millionaire's daughter among those in custody. He added that it has also been learned an 11-year-old girl has been arrested.

Bolstered police presence is being credited with helping stem the tide of violence in London on Wednesday evening, as thousands of police officers patrolled the city with the help of armoured vehicles.

Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium told CBC that it's estimated London businesses have lost $28.1 million in looted stock, and $129.4 million in retail sales.

"Overwhelming, people are utterly disgusted by what's going on," Dodd said from London, adding that "retailers are crucial elements of communites" and are "the lifeblood of communities."

Speaking outside 10 Downing Street following an emergency security meeting Wednesday, the prime minister noted that the addition of 10,000 police, for a total of 16,000, on the streets of London on Tuesday night and into the morning had helped curtail the violence.

Cameron said police have been authorized to use baton rounds (plastic bullets) and that a water cannon is available at 24 hours notice.

The riots started Saturday after the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in Tottenham on Thursday. Police said Duggan was shot dead when officers from Operation Trident, the unit that investigates gun crime in the black community, stopped a cab he was riding in.

An inquest into Duggan's death opened Tuesday, but a full hearing will likely take several months.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating Duggan's shooting, said a "non-police firearm" was recovered at the scene, but that there was no evidence it had been fired.