It’s unclear exactly why, but the Department of Homeland has been operating a “Social Networking/Media Capability” program to monitor the top blogs, forums and social networks online for at least the past 18 months.
Based on a privacy compliance review from last November recently obtained by Reuters, the purpose of the project is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.” Whatever that means.
Either way, the list of sites reported by Reuters is pretty intriguing:
Social Networks
- Myspace
Blogs
- The Drudge Report
- The Huffington Post
- The New York Times‘s Lede blog
- Wired’s Threat Level
- Wired’s Danger Room
- ABC News’ investigative blog The Blotter
- “blogs that cover bird flu … news and activity along U.S. borders … drug trafficking and cybercrime”
Multimedia
- Hulu
- YouTube
- Flickr
What about Matzav.com?
{The Atlantic Wire/Matzav.com Newscenter}
There are many, many US Government organizations besides DHS monitoring social networks and blogs.
Matzav.com doesn’t have to worry that they’re left out in the cold.
Besides, “Ayin ro’eh, v’Ozen shoma’as, v’hakol b’Sefer nichtavim.”
Hey.. you ain’t gonna get so lucky 🙂
Whats there to monitor? everything is printed unless they use a Teleprompter
It’s maybe not so much what is posted on the sites. The real insteresting stuff is in the talk-backs. For instance, I’ve read talk-backs which praise assassinating the President. If I were in Homeland Security, I would be quite interested in knowing about this. It’s also easy to post information on how to build bombs online. And remember that the Arab Spring was largely coordinated through social media sites. An open blog, news site or Facebook page is in the public domain, same as a newspaper.