Well HELLO, Agent Mike... and Agent Bob, and Agent Sue, and...

[charlie]

The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.

In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.

Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13sun2.html

[Hannah Bell]

1. i wondered why people were so eager to join those things. i always thought of them

as a monitoring device, whereby you, your family, your friends, business associates, etc. are collected for possible use.

[malaise]

4. +1

:hi:

[paulsby]

2. it's a great intel tool

i've used facebook, etc for some investigation (both in a covert capacity purporting to be somebody i'm not), and in an intel gathering capacity.

heck, i recall a recent crime (a theft) where the moron who committed a theft was stupid enough to put a picture of him with the stolen item on his myspace page.

idiots like that deserve to get caught.

if you say something on a blog, open network, twitter, or a website like this, why would you think it's "private?"

it's about as private as standing in the town commons and yelling your political opinions.

[Tesha]

5. Based on your political views, I always figured that was why you were here.

I'm glad you finally admitted it.

Tesha

[Cid_B]

6. Which part of that rubs you the wrong way...

or doesn't ring as true?

[paulsby]

8. if u don't worship kucinich

and think that socialism is swell, yer obviously a closet freeper . that's the implication.

i'm the first pro-marriage equality, anti drug war, pro universal healthcare, pro-choice republican spy.

what a schtick!

[Cid_B]

9. They want you to fight crime the way then want me to fight a war...

Make sure everyone has an even chance... no technology if the opposing side doesn't have it... there are definitely mulligans for stupid behavior and you are a selfish jerk if you take advantage of the opposing forces stupidity... you must be physically present to participate...

I could go on and on...

[paulsby]

11. we have the most restrained

and regulated military we have ever had. you know that. people got away with crap in WWII (the "good war") that would NEVER fly these days. you can't use "drones". that's uncivilized!!!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. Get a room, you two. -nt

[paulsby]

16. you can return to your

"socialism is great" "amerikkka sucks" circle jerk if this bothers you...

hth

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. I don't belong to any of those, since I'm not the stereotype you seem to think every liberal is. -nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. "and think that socialism is swell" -- GASP! Oh the EVIL!1!!11cos(0)1!!

We heinous liberals want to turn our countries into -- the horror -- SWEDEN!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-21-2009/the-stockholm-syndrome-pt--1

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-22-2009/the-stockholm-syndrome-pt--2

[paulsby]

17. sweden has

the majority of their economy in private hands. last i checked, at leaste. it's hardly a socialist country, on the whole.

personally, i vastly prefer our system, but there are worse things you can achieve than a "lagom" society.

when i refer to socialists, i am talking about the castro et al fellow travelers.

hth

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

20. Reply #19 seems to apply here too.

[vadawg]

14. dude my favourite is the bangers who pose on myspace, facebook etc

then deny they bang, or the one guy who said he had never held a gun but there on his facebook was a pic of him and the weapon used in an attempted murder.. I cant beleive that people are so dumb but sometimes im glad especially with the kiddie fiddlers as we would have a hard time catching them otherwise..

[paulsby]

18. we generally only catch the dumb ones

it's job security.

craigslist and ebay are good too. i tell burg/prowl victims to check them in the weeks following a burglary. you'd be surprised how often very identifiable stuff shows up there within days, if not hours of the burglary.

they often don't even bother to segment the stuff.

like a guy will steal an xbox, 3 games, and a sony dvd player
and put an ad on craigslist, advertising an xbox, 3 games, and a sony dvd player

duh...

the thing that drives me nuts about myspace is the teenage girls who seem to think it's the ideal place to post stuff like "i'm just chilling at my house, since mom and dad are away on date night" or post pictures of themselves in extremely revealing clothing, and stuff like that.

is there anybody over the age of 18 who uses myspace that ISN'T some sort of predator?

[fasttense]

3. So, they are mining data from Facebook and other social networks.

NO surprise there. It was bound to happen. If you are going to put all your personal info out on the internets, pictures of your young children, friends, parties you've gone to, your life, love and passions, why shouldn't the government use it?

I've heard that prospective employers use it. No doubt pedophiles gather info this way. I'm sure marketing research firms use it. It was bound to happen that the police would use it too.

Do members of these social networks really think their personal information is somehow kept private?

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Makes sense to do it to find pedophiles.

[Kaleva]

10. Expecting privacy on the internet is a rather foolish notion.

[Arctic Dave]

12. Nothing new here. The cops and Feds have been doing it for years.

I would be extremely suprised if there wasn't a couple on this site.