Big Brother is Watching You on Facebook, Twitter, Black Planet...

As reported today on Democracy Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) learned through Freedom of Information Act documents that the Department of Homeland Security "established a Social Networking Monitoring Center (SNMC) to monitor social networking sites for “items of interest”.

In her article on the EFF's website, Jennifer Lynch writes

"Among the key “Candidates 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. According to the slides, SNMC looks for “‘items of interest’ in the routine of social networking posts on the events, organizations, activities, and environment” of important events."  Read more.

In an earlier article, she cites a May 2008 memo by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) entitled Social Networking Sites and Their Importance to FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] which states:

"Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels 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. This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."  Read More.

Note to self - Assume that the government is monitoring everything that I post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  Be even more selective when "friending" people on Facebook and other sites.