The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released internal federal documents detailing how FBI agents are creating false or deceptive profiles online to gather more personal information on Americans.
From the Associated Press story:
U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.
… More details here
hat tip to Tom Blanton’s Project for a New American Revolution
Inasmuch as I’ve refused to join “Facebook” until they have a variant entitled “Assbook”, if it ever does come to pass, we have a fail-safe identifier of the malign snoopers. Government Apparatchiks always reveal their identity in any arse photograph because their heads are impacted front and center.
“Assbook”? Hmmmm…. I suspect that that would prove very popular with some segments of the populace.
I’ve also refused to join this Facebook thing myself. I’d be more tempted to join a Get-Out-Of-My-Face Book type of site.
Anyway, EFF has a page about this social network monitoring stuff and they say they will be posting more documents there if anyone wants to follow this issue.
http://www.eff.org/foia/social-network-monitoring
“None of the agencies had completed processing the requests in the applicable 20-day deadline.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we could treat the census and our tax returns in the same manner?
Christ on a crutch, can’t we have ANYTHING without these wankers getting their ass-scratchers into it? Can’t they leave me alone for five damn minutes?
Tom – thanks for the EFF link. They do great stuff.
Marc – the federal Freedom of Information Act is not really a law…. I have had many experiences with FOIA – a few agencies have acted honorably and diligently – but many others….
Alpowolf – the FBI has hired lots of new analysts, so they need to generate new arrests and reports on suspects to justify the staffing level.
I would be curious to know what the FBI agents on Facebook have already done to manufacture criminals…..