DHS social media hearing reveals how secretive, unaccountable is the agency
*The House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Intelligence was not pleased.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1816814/department-of-homeland-security-explains-social-media-monitoring-project-to-congress
Highlights from article, but I strongly encourage reading of the whole thing.
*At a Congressional hearing(yesterday) morning that veered into contentious arguments and cringe-worthy moments,
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spilled the beans on their social media monitoring project.
DHS Chief Privacy Office Mary Ellen Callahan and Director of Operations Coordination and Planning Richard Chavez appeared to be deliberately stonewalling Congress on the depth, ubiquity, goals, and technical capabilities of the agency's social media surveillance.
At other times, they appeared to be themselves unsure about their own project's ultimate goals and uses.
But one thing is for sure: If you're the first person to tweet about a news story, or if you're a community activist who makes public Facebook posts--DHS will have your personal information.
*the Homeland Security Department has outsourced their own social media monitoring program to an outside contractor, defense giant General Dynamics. General Dynamics was the sole party to the original DHS contract, which was not offered to any outside parties--and Chavez was caught misleading the Committee about General Dyamics' sole status.
*General Dynamics and the Department of Homeland Security are primarily engaging in keyword monitoring of social media.
*The Twitter handles, Facebook names and blog urls of first witnesses to news events (the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and a January 2012 bomb threat at an Austin, Texas, school were specifically cited) are being recorded.
*DHS appears to be keeping tabs on individual American citizens engaged in community activism and hot-button political issues.
*Against the DHS' own guidelines, the agency compiled a report titled Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI. This report contained sentiment gathered from newspaper comment talkbacks, local blogs, Twitter posts, and publicly available Facebook posts--something expressly forbidden by the DHS' own policies.
*DHS representatives appeared unclear on what the collected data would actually be used for and which agencies would be using it.
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