Private Posts Prohibit Public Peeking
As if the public needed another reminder to be careful what they publicly share on social networking sites, the FBI is currently working on a new project that will monitor Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites for keywords related to terrorism and other criminal activity. The FBI is asking companies to create a means of sifting through all the tweets, posts, and pictures in order to identify present and future threats.
The main purpose of the software, once developed and put into place, will be to allow the FBI to identify terrorists and criminals by highlighting social networking posts that include certain keywords. Some of these keywords will include “small pox”, “leak”, “gangs”, and “2600” (the name of a popular hacking magazine).
In order to sort through the data, the FBI wants to have the flagged posts appear on a map. Ideally, the data would be color-coded according to threat level to make it easier to identify possible incidents of criminal activity.
This software to monitor social networking posts has many people worried about the future of free speech. Speaking about social networking users’ freedom to say whatever they wish because they expect only their friends are listening, Jennifer Lynch from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco told New Scientist “these tools that mine open source data, and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US.”
Ms. Lynch’s concerns are very real. If you knew that the FBI could be watching your Twitter and your Facebook, would you still post the same things or would you perhaps edit yourself? Many people might give up on social networking all together from fear of governmental misunderstandings.
Thankfully, the FBI will only have the ability to monitor the posts you make public. That means if you change your privacy settings so that none of your posts are public, you do not have to worry that the FBI is spying on you.
Of course, the experts have been telling us to take charge of our Internet security and make more information private for years. Some people have listened, but for the people who have not yet done so, this would be an excellent time to revise your social networking privacy settings. Make your information private and remember that once you post something online it can be very hard to permanently delete.
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