FBI proposes new software to patrol social media accounts
The president may be your newest follower on Twitter, whether you like it or not.
The FBI recently developed a proposal to create a social media application aiming to “quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats,” according to a request for information posting last week on the Federal Business Opportunities website, fedbizopps.gov.
Such an application would scrape and scour "open-source and public" accounts from venues such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to “assemble critical and open source information and intelligence,” the posting said. The goal of the application is to recognize and flag key words and phrases that could represent potential threats to homeland security.
According to an FBI spokesman on the site, words like “lock down, bomb, suspicious package, white powder and active shoot” would trip the system and alert FBI officials.
Using Google Maps and other similar programs, the application would then be able to pinpoint the geographical location of the tweet.
While the proposal resonates as a privacy precaution for the improvement of the country's and individual's security, to some university students it represents a questionable shift in online personal privacy.
“It's a little scary, to be honest,” said Hilary Hellane, senior business student and student supervisor at Ram Tech, Colorado State University's on-campus software and computer help center.
Hellane is well aware of current technologies at the university that perform similar operations, but she isn’t so sure the rest of the student body is. Working in the Ram Tech office, she has observed several student run-ins with the school’s online network policies, and although she recognizes the benefits of such an application, she is wary of seemingly similar big-brother procedures.
CSU monitors its own network in two distinct ways, according to Hellane. The first is by recognizing and quarantining computers that illegally download software and other media. The second is by not allowing any type of online chatting like Skype, iChat and Face Time on personal phones and computers while operating on the university's network.
These procedures are carried out by CSU’s Information Technology Executive Committee, which has detailed the framework of their plan to “combat illegal file sharing” on CSU’s Academic Computing and Networking Services website.
“I think monitoring the illegal downloads is a good thing because I've witnessed many lawsuits against students for it (pirating media); we're trying to protect people,” Hellane said. “But I have no idea why they (the ITEC) don't allow conference calls. It's such a pain.”
Although the school's social media monitoring operations are aimed to protect students and not of the same caliber as those proposed by the FBI, the government’s successful development of this new application could mean potentially drastic changes to students’ use of social media and online interaction.
Paranoia and discontentment comprised one student's reactions to the FBI’s proposal, if it were to make its way to university social media policies.
“I am required to use Facebook for my Arabic class and that idea in general seems like a breach of my privacy,” said Carlye Sayler, sophomore international studies major. “The whole blending of individual social media with large institutions like universities and the government is a scary thing to me. I would never feel totally comfortable online again if I knew there was software out there watching me, regardless of how innocent my activity was.”
Some students do not believe potentially thwarting threats on public safety validates infringement on their online privacy, but local law enforcement recognizes the value of monitoring online activity.
The Fort Collins Police Department, which frequently works with CSU on student-related incidents, has not yet made a shift toward carefully watching social media, but claimed it has used such venues to approach public safety in the past.
“We primarily use it for communication, not monitoring necessarily,” said FCPD public safety representative Rita Davis. “There have been times we were made aware of large parties occurring or being planned online and we worked with CSU to either contact students to inform them of their responsibilities as party host or take preemptive action to make sure they were aware of consequences.”
The department does not have staff “dedicated to sitting around and watching social media,” but, according to Davis, it is premature to decide whether or not software that allows for online threat patrolling would be adopted by the Fort Collins Police Department.
by Colleen Canty
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