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Joe Giacalone, former officer of the Police Department of New York , who currently teaches at John Jay College, said L & # 39; economist that the platforms are "a hidden treasure for researchers". He added: "People are publishing things that they should not: vehicles, weapons, everything, if someone is silly enough to post something on social networks. and he is wanted for a crime, he deserves to be caught"
In Giacalone's sentence, there is a Key phrase: "And he is wanted for a crime". That would be equivalent to a policeman, who watches over someone suspected of breaking the law, use what you heard someone say in a bar. However, what the police and the FBI of the United States seem to do is different. something else: mbadive surveillance. Which includes the vast majority of citizens who have not committed a crime.
The tools of indiscriminate monitoring of a platform, automated monitoring and extraction of navigation data Reverse engineering is at the center of the debate. And in particular its use at the expense of freedom of expression.
"Documents obtained by the National Union of Civil Liberties (ACLU) in Northern California has revealed that in 2015 a police department of Fresno has employed a social media monitoring company that has touted itself to be able to "avoid the warranty process by identifying accounts on particular individuals' platforms." and could "identify threats to public safety" watch for such terms as "police brutality", "we want justice", "dissent" and "black life, it matters"", reported the British weekly.
Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties lawyer at ACLU, told the media that "The government should not exercise surveillance without suspicion of activities protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution". While people can control their privacy settings, the idea that the government can investigate all of its publications "could be uncomfortable," he said. L & # 39; economist.
ACLU asked the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Office of Immigration and Refugee Customs Control (ICE) and the State Department provide documentation on their activities "which have increased considerably in recent years" of "monitoring people in social networks".
The agencies remained silent despite the fact that the request had been made in the Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Ultimately, only the FBI replied that he could not "neither confirm nor deny the existence of documents".
Then, ACLU opened the trial of seven federal agencies explain how they "collect and badyze publications on Facebook, Twitter" and other platforms.
"Government monitoring of social networks raises serious concerns about freedom of expression and privacy", detailed in the lawsuit filed in a district court in San Francisco. The indiscriminate examination of online speech "increases the chances that it will be investigated, monitored, or included in alert lists, arbitrarily, the innocent"
Mbad surveillance is not limited to police authorities in California counties. ICEFor example, it collects huge amounts of information about immigrants, including his publications on social networks, illustrate the ACLU's request.
"The President Donald Trump has ordered immigration agencies to "scrutinize" certain categories of visa applicants"he pointed The San Francisco Chronicle. "The State Department, which reviews 14.7 million visa applications a year, has ordered almost all of these claimants to provide their identities in social networks in the last six years"
But the federal oversight of these popular sites did not begin with the Republican government: during the presidency of Barack ObamaIn 2012, the FBI searched for information on "an automated search tool for information on online platforms," continued the briefing of the ACLU. And in 2016 "the FBI announced the purchase of software that gave you full access to data on Twitter".
The model has reached the minors in public schools in Chicago. Over the last four years, an incentive of $ 2.2 million from the Total School Safety Initiative, Ministry of Justice, covered "the salaries of two intelligence badysts and the cost of social network monitoring software study online conversations of students, "denounced ProPublica Illinois.
The program ran out of funds in 2017 and, while seeking new ones, controversial because most of the students, and especially the students' parents, were not informed about its application.
"Some can congratulate the FBI for detecting online threats, but others remember their initiative. Cointelpro, which lasted from 1956 to 1971 and included the surveillance and infiltration of groups that the agency considered subversiveamong them, organizations for the defense of civil rights, "he said. L & # 39; economist.
Unlike this program, the data mining software makes blind monitoring much cheaper. And the tendency of people to live their lives in social networks makes this easier, the article evaluated.
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