Have you ever thought about who might be monitoring your social network profile between times to time? or about your last Facebook message is being reviewed by someone in the govern? Well, you wouldn’t be mistaken if you considered that.
In 2012, the Department of Homeland securities spend more than 11 billion to monitor social networks profiles. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is the firm hired by the government to control social media contents. Under the Freedom of Information Act, they have rights to access information about a wide search area. As the director of EPIC’s open government project said “the agency is monitoring constantly, under very broad search terms, and is not limiting that monitoring to event or activates related to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, or manmade disasters”.
In fact, Homeland Security include in their search key lists words like “exercise”,” wave”,” initiation”, and “relief”, all of which are not directly related or perceived to be connected to any type of national security threat or criminal activities. However is magnifies the power the government agency has against Internet users privacy rights. This kind of power could be dangerous if it used in an inappropriate way. However, most of social networks CEOs and owners have not been happy with such regulations and trying to reduce government control by fighting these regulations in courts and by exposing statists of government requests for users data in order to encourage the public to be in their side. In addition, social networks don’t usually respond to all government requests and sometime choose not to give out information if the government has no justifiable reason for getting this information. For instance, Facebook compliance rate varies from country to another. The United States has the highest compliance rate of 79% while UK has a rate of 68, and India with 50%.
Written By: Abdullah Aljarallah
Citation:
Rushe, Dominic. "Facebook Reveals Governments Asked for Data on 38,000 Users in 2013."Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 28 Aug. 2013. Web. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/27/facebook-government-user-requests>.
Stone, Andrea. "Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/homeland-security-manual_n_1299908.html>.
Johnson, Bryana. "Why Is the Government Monitoring Social Media Networks?" Washington Times Communities. N.p., 28 Feb. 2012. Web. <http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/high-tide-and-turn/2012/feb/28/why-government-monitoring-social-media-networks/>.
I find this very interesting the compliance rate in the US is the highest which does not shock me at all. Can you include a couple of more compliance rates of other countries? how about the lowest rates? please reply with a comment
ReplyDeleteThe surprising thing after reading the Guardian 'Facebook' article (source) is not the compliance rates of governments, but the total number of request between the US and companies trailing behind. "US authorities made 11,000-12,000 requests for information on 20,000-21,000 individuals over the six months." India on the other hand had 3,245 requests on 4,144 users. Comparing our population differences, it's hard to justify the amount of request of information on Facebook users.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion on the government monitoring our activity is simple. We are entirely too paranoid and worried about what could possibly going on online that we ignore some threats in the real world. Just by typing and publishing this I could start to be monitored. I think that the government has too much power when it comes to their access to our social and even financial information since everything we do is online.
ReplyDelete