The FBI is getting in on the law enforcement app game on the heels of a controversial data mining project by the Homeland Security Department.
Documents recently posted on line seek industry input to develop the equivalent of a web alert system.
“I think what you are looking at is a Google news feed specifically targeted for law enforcement, focusing on their specific needs,” Frank Ciluffo, who leads George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, told Fox News..“We’re on our mobile phones and we’re on our various iPhones, BlackBerrys and the like that transmits data that locates individuals.”
The 12-page document, called “FBI Social Media Application,” provides a detailed picture of the bureau’s specifications. The program must have the ability “to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence … to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”
Ciluffo, who was also a former adviser in the George W. Bush White House, said tracking social media is the tip of the spear for national security investigations and it raises privacy questions, over whether law enforcement officers are allowed to monitor public social media posts.
“If you’re in law enforcement’s shoes, and certainly if you’ve got a counterterrorism organization, I wouldn’t see why they should feel that anyone else can monitor but they can’t,” he said.
Ciluffo said technology is running way of ahead, and the government is about to meet the new social network. “We’ve got to figure what is the right balance between privacy and security. And I’m not sure we, as a country, have addressed that question. When you’re dealing with known foreign terrorist organizations and sympathizers and known terrorists, to me that’s a cut-and-dry kind of case.”
According to the ACLU, who reviewed the FBI documents for Fox News, information pulled from sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs could be cross referenced with other databases to identify potential threats. Mike German, a former FBI agent who runs the National Security section of the civil liberties group, says the data could be used to increase video surveillance in a neighborhood. German argues fundamental issues are not being addressed.
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