The Boston Police Department is on the verge of buying new software that will scan social media and the Internet for criminal activity and threats to public safety — a step that civil liberties groups say is a worrisome risk to free speech and privacy.
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Read More… from Boston police set to buy social media monitoring software
From Courthouse News Service: (CN) – After stonewalling demands about its plans to monitor social media, the Department of Homeland Security owes $30,000 in attorneys’ fees, a federal judge ruled.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said Homeland Security announced plans to monitor social media sites in February 2011.
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Read More… from Social media monitoring secrecy will cost feds
From PR Watch: Records obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD) shed new light on a technology, OpenMIND, utilized by law enforcement/counter-terrorism fusion center personnel in gathering and analyzing mass amounts of “open source intelligence” derived from the online lives of Americans.
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Read More… from Inside the OpenMIND: Open source social media datamining and “predictive” policing
A few open government and FOIA news items selected from many of interest that we might or might not have drawn attention to earlier:
Open Data Handbook 1.0 introduces open data
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From Computerworld:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is engaging in media monitoring activity that achieves no public safety goals and will likely have a chilling effect on legitimate criticism of the agency, a leading privacy advocacy group warned Friday.
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Read More… from DHS media monitoring could chill public dissent, EPIC warns
From Nextgov:
Privacy advocates are suing the Homeland Security Department to obtain information on a program that monitors the social media interactions of citizens following a federal vendor's private sector plans to sabotage certain groups' online activities with similar technology.
Homeland Security officials have expanded an ongoing initiative that tracks public online communications in the interests of public safety, according a February DHS notice.
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Read More… from DHS program to monitor social media users draws lawsuit
