

FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace - Slimy
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/fbi-to-monitor-facebook-twitter-myspace/8119

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cheald
Someone else raised this point elsewhere but...so what? Monitoring public
information is their job. I'd be disappointed if they _weren't_ monitoring
those services.

If you post public information, it's publicly consumable, including by
government intelligence services. If you have a problem with that, consider
that the issue might be your choice to post information publicly that you
don't want the FBI to see, rather than the fact that the FBI is looking at it.

~~~
c0mpute
The difference as far as I can see is that as a startup would I be granted
access to all the data? AFAIK facebook terms say I cannot scrape the
information and in the past they had forced a hacker to delete the database
that was collected by scraping this info.

This sets a dangerous precedent. By letting a government authority to oversee
the activity, even if considered public, is still personal. Its a step closer
to the cliche - "In Soviet Russia TV watches you"

~~~
nab
What in the article suggests that these social networking sites are relaxing
their terms for the FBI?

~~~
c0mpute
Correct, there is no indication of that. I would be really happy to see if
Facebook/twitter reject FBI's request. I was just hypothesizing that in the
event that FBI is granted scrapping access, they should give similar access to
other bots (or even Google to download contacts?). The ideal situation would
be that FBI is not granted access.

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ori_b
You mean they don't already? That's a bit of a surprise. It's public
information.

If they had been given access to private posts, that would be a cause for
concern.

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gkurtz1
This seems to be very clearly against Facebook and Twitter's terms, unless
they are given permission:

Facebook: "You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise
access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots,
spiders, or scrapers) without our permission." \-
<https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms>

Twitter: "You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the
Services: (i) access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the Services,
Twitter’s computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Twitter’s
providers; (ii) probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or
network or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measures; (iii)
access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any means
(automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published
interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to those terms and
conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate
agreement with Twitter (NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in
accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the
Services without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited)" \-
<https://twitter.com/tos>

(edit: typo)

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ender7
Once again, the Onion got there first.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0>

I will start worrying when companies are legally required to let the FBI trawl
through the databases without a warrant. It's hard to make a law against
scraping public information.

~~~
smokeyj
Look up NSL.

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omarchowdhury
Direct link to the FBI's Request for Information document regarding the
'Social Media Application':

[https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=7f9abf0ff0fdba171d1130ddf4...](https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=7f9abf0ff0fdba171d1130ddf412aea3)

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yuvadam
Am I the only one that finds it obscene that the FBI can download all my data
in one-click, but I can't [1]?

[1] The current "Download my Data" functionality is a joke. Try it for
yourself and see what I mean.

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nostromo
I'm more interested in seeing what they end up paying for this software when
it's built. I'm sure the right couple of geeks from HN could do it in a few
months for fairly little; I'm sure the FBI will end up paying many millions.

The FBI would be smart to learn from DARPA and take a prize approach on
projects like this. "First company that builds X to our satisfaction will get
$1mm." I imagine it'd save them a ton.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Doesn't Palantir already do that?

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SoftwareMaven
I assumed they already did this. As long as the data is public, there's not
much you can do. As always, be cognizant of your online persona!

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spoiledtechie
They have already been doing it for a few years now. I don't think you
understand what sort of infiltration software their contractors make. It gets
deep fast. They aren't as good as some of the stuff at other three letter
agencies, but its getting there.

If only you guys on the West coast knew what gets built here on the East
coast...

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nodata
They already do: [http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4095372/Twitter-
ne...](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4095372/Twitter-news-US-bars-
friends-over-Twitter-joke.html)

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Sam_Odio
_> PDF, half the pages are oddly blank_

Duplex scanner.

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joshontheweb
I figured they were already doing this. Once I heard that Library of Congress
was archiving tweets I assumed they either were or would be monitoring that
information. I always heard that they have computers listening for keywords on
phone conversations also. I never knew if it was true or a urban legend.

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lowglow
I'd like to be the first to throw my hat in the ring. Anyone want to make
millions off the government with me?

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MarkTraceur
Luckily, my illegal activities will never be discovered--I only use Diaspora,
identi.ca, and GNU Social.

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kijin
tl;dr: FBI wants to have its own version of what every startup that scrapes
data from social media sites have been doing already, and the only change is
that "keywords" and "trends" are now called "threats".

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Tichy
You mean they are not doing it already? Weird.

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iamdann
I'm sure there's a startup somewhere building an app for that.

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danberger
Does the fact they specifically include MySpace in Section H, subsection a, in
the original Request for Information indicate just how disconnected the people
who are writing these are from consumer internet trends?

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Craiggybear
"FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace"

Like, does anyone think that they aren't already?

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hnecib
I can't imagine the amount of channel noise generated by certain keywords. And
for every one you'd have to do a time consuming search through the user's
social graph(s).

There should be a function in the scraper that gives each user a unique ID,
and retains an instance count of keyword 'hits'. Over time, the user would
build up a 'heat rating' and IDs could be sorted by this. That way, people
generating keyword noise over and over again could be separated from the
general population for a closer look.

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publicus
P2P social network is the future

~~~
krigath
We all act as peers in a large social structure in the current world. I have
heard about the idea of P2P social networks several times. However, the trend
seem to be going in the opposite direction: Look at the cloud.

I would think the majority of Facebook users would not see the need for having
an always-on server in their own home hosting their social network, and
therefore have a hard time imagining that "P2P social [networking] is the
future". They would either have to have this in their own home, or rented from
some company, costing money, and, once again, centralising information.

