Facebook’s New ‘Download Your Information’ Option Is A Sham

April 16, 2012

End The Lie

By Madison Ruppert

“Facebook probably knows more about you than members of your own family.” –KTRN

Congress Refused To Protect Privacy On Facebook

March 30, 2012

RT

By RT

“No wonder congress has such a low approval rating.” –KTRN

In the current state of the US economy it’s getting tougher and tougher to find a job. With an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent, according to the latest job numbers, saying yes to a job is a no brainer.

Now imagine in order to get the job you must disclose your Facebook password.

On Tuesday night, House Republicans stopped a measure that would have allowed the Federal Communications Commission to prevent employers from forcing potential employees to disclose their Facebook passwords.

Republicans who are against “big government,” have delivered a huge blow to the legislation that was presented by Democrats.

The purpose of the legislation was part of a bill to implement new restrictions on the FCC rules after a series of cases where employers have requested access to social media accounts.

“What this amendment does is it says you cannot demand as a condition of employment that somebody reveal a confidential password to their Facebook, to their Flickr, to their Twitter, whatever their account may be,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D- Colo.).

According to a post by Facebook, the company has “seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people’s Facebook profiles or private information.”

The social media giant added that the practice “undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and users’ friends.”

According to WANE.com, Anthony Juliano has been keeping a close watch on the growing trend. Juliano, a social media expert said, “it’s really not new, but it’s getting people’s attention because it is controversial,” he said.

Juliano also added that he directly hasn’t heard of a case, but has confirmed the practice is more common in trades such as law enforcement.

Click here for the full report.

12-Year-Old Girl Sues School For Spying On Her Facebook Account

March 12, 2012

Activist Post

By AP

“Be careful – you might want to just post funny, goofy, and mindless drivel on your social media pages just in case they want to come after you.” –KTRN

The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a 12-year-old middle school student who was detained and interrogated by Minnesota school officials who demanded her Facebook and email passwords.

According to CNN, the girl claims she was “‘intimidated, frightened, humiliated and sobbing while she was detained in the small school room’ as she watched a counselor, a deputy, and another school employee pore over her private communications.”

The “interrogation” of the student stemmed from an incident where the girl wrote on her Facebook wall that hall monitors in the school were being “mean” to her and that she hated them, which the school determined was enough justification to demand a review of all her private communications.

Click here for the full report.

FBI In The Process Of Creating A System For Monitoring All Conversations On Social Networking Sites

March 12, 2012

Natural News

By J.D. Heyes

“You might want to think twice about posting a rant about the government on your Facebook wall. Instead, post pictures of your kids and pretend everything is perfect in the world like most of the sheeple do.” –KTRN

If you’re a regular reader of NaturalNews, you’re already well aware of the fact that government, the courts and private industry have all essentially disregarded the intent and meaning of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment privacy protections in the age of information technology. It seems that you give up your right to be “secure” in your “persons, houses, papers, and effects” if you dare to use a social media network or virtually any other information exchange system.

The latest onslaught comes from the FBI, which is only the most recent federal agency seeking to monitor all of your conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The bureau has placed a request from tech firms to develop a program that would enable agents to sift through waves of “publicly available” information, ostensibly to look for keywords related to terrorism, criminal activity and other threats to national security.

‘Early warning’ system?

The goal, according to the bureau’s request, is to develop a sort of early warning system that provides real-time intelligence to improve “the FBI’s overall situational awareness.” The proposed program must “have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats.”

The FBI joins DARPA – the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in searching for a program that can “monitor” social media chatter (DARPA, ironically enough, invented the Internet, not Al Gore). The difference there, however, is that the Defense Department and the CIA focus on threats overseas; the FBI, meanwhile, is a domestic law enforcement apparatus, and as such, subject to constitutional restrictions regarding the development of its cases.

Click here for the full report.

Document Proves DHS Is Monitoring Social Media For Government Criticism

February 23, 2012

Info Wars

By Paul Joesph Watson

“You might want to think twice before you post an anti-government comment on your Facebook page. Apparently, the government doesn’t have anything better to do than read social media. What are they afraid of? The answer is you and me. Hooray for freedom.” –KTRN

A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners.

“Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows,” reports the New York Times.

The manual, entitled Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability Desktop Reference Binder, was obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center via a FOIA request.

The controversy over DHS spying on social media erupted last month following the release of 300 documents which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.”

During a subsequent Congressional hearing on the matter, DHS representatives Mary Callahan and Richard Chávez denied the fact that tracking criticism of government agencies formed any part of the program, and that the effort was merely aimed at developing “situational awareness” of potential threats, mostly related to extreme weather events.

However, the 2011 manual makes it abundantly clear that the program was a backdoor effort to keep tabs on what the American people were saying about not just the DHS, but a whole host of federal agencies, including the CIA, the ATF, the TSA, FEMA, as well as organizations outside of the U.S. government such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.

Click here for the full report.

Not Lovin’ It: McDonald’s Eats Humble Pie After Twitter Backlash

February 3, 2012

The Independent

By Adam Sherwin

“This is pretty funny. McDoanlds tried entering the Twitter world only to get automatically blasted with negative comments. I wonder why?” –KTRN

McDonald’s has admitted a venture into social media backfired when a Twitter campaign designed to spread good news about the fast-food giant was hijacked by unhappy eaters.

McDonald’s sent out two tweets with the hashtag #McDStories to highlight the “hard-working people” who help to produce its meals and promote the chain’s use of fresh produce. One tweet from a potato supplier read: “When u make something w/pride, people can taste it”.

But critics fired back with abusive tweets, incorporating the hashtag, describing their dining horror stories. They accused the company of making customers sick, serving pig meat from gestation crates and offering up a burger containing a finger nail.

The official McDonald’s twitter feed was forced into an extended debate with animal rights group Peta, which accused the company of using mechanically separated chicken for its McNuggets. McDonald’s said the claim was false because it only uses “USDA inspected white meat”.

McDonald’s had used a paid-for tweeting service to promote its hashtags to the top of Twitter’s “trending” lists to try and create a buzz about the campaign.

But the company was quickly forced to abandon the #McDStories hashtag. Rick Wion, McDonald’s social media director, admitted: “Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned. It was negative enough that we set about a change of course.”

Click here for the full report.

FBI Would Like To Follow You On Facebook And Twitter

January 27, 2012

RT

By RT

“Be careful what you post on Facebook or Twitter. It could come back back to bite you someday.” –KTRN

The FBI has got tired of monitoring social media sites manually and wants to reinvent the process. So, soon your posts may instantly light up on a map as a big red dot if considered suspicious, marking the location of the ‘bad actor.’

­”Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations,” says the Request for Information published by FBI on January 19.

The FBI’s ‘market research’ shows that the bureau is planning to monitor all ‘publicly available’ data on social media sites through a new game-changing system.

The bureau is looking for a company which is interested in and capable of building such a system and has published a list of requirements for it.

The enquiry says that the system should provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crises, and threats that meet the search parameters defined by the FBI.

It should also be capable of automated filtering of the data and of providing the operator with instant notification of breaking events and emerging threats.

The FBI places strong emphasis on the fact that the system should access only ‘publicly available’ data, taking every occurrence of this phrase in quotes throughout the whole document.

But most people do not realize that the data they are sharing with their friends on social networking sites is in fact publicly available.

The average user believes that only a narrow circle of close friends and relatives are reading his or her blog, and this gives them “the sense of freedom to say what they want without worrying too much about recourse,” says Jennifer Lynch at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as cited by newscientist.com. “But these tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a very long time do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US.”

Click here for the full report.

Department of Homeland Security Monitoring All Social Media Outlets

January 16, 2012

The New American

By Joe Wolverton II

With so many of our most essential liberties under attack from the oligarchy on the Potomac, it is little wonder that the freedom of the press and speech are next on the government guillotine.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center (NOC) released its Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative last year and in that report the intelligence-gathering arm of the DHS, the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) gives itself permission to “gather, store, analyze, and disseminate” data on millions of users of social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and business networking sites (Linkedin).

Specifically, the Initiative sets out the plan and purpose behind the DHS’s collection of personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters, or anyone else who posts articles, comments, or other information to many popular web outlets. The report defines the target audience as anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

Journalists and bloggers need not worry, however. DHS promises that it will not routinely gather and use Personally Identifiable Information (PII). From the abstract of the Initiative:

While this Initiative is not designed to actively collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII), OPS is conducting this update to the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) because this initiative may now collect and disseminate PII for certain narrowly tailored categories. For example, in the event of an in extremis situation involving potential life and death, OPS will share certain PII with the responding authority in order for them to take the necessary actions to save a life, such as name and location of a person calling for help buried under rubble, or hiding in a hotel room when the hotel is under attack by terrorists.

In other words, the government promises that all the personal electronic data that it monitors and records will only be used in “narrowly tailored” circumstances, saving a life, for example. There is no requirement that the data be used only in those instances, but there is a promise that it will be.

This unconstitutional, unwarranted search of private information is designed by DHS “to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture” of target audiences.

Click here for the full report from The New American.

Can The U.S. Government Close Social Media Accounts?

December 22, 2011

Salon

By Glenn Greenwald

“If they close down social media accounts of “terrorists,” they can close down yours for posting anything negative about the government.   Not to mention they then will have information on who doesn’t like the current administration.” –KTRN

The Obama administration and The New York Times are teaming up to expose and combat the grave threat posed by a Twitter account, purportedly operated by the Somali group Shabab, and in doing so, are highlighting the simultaneous absurdity and perniciousness of the War on Terror. This latest tale of Dark Terrorist Evil began on December 14 when the NYT‘s Jeffrey Gettleman directed intrepid journalistic light on the Twitter account maintained under the name “HSMPress,” which claims to be the press office of Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahedeen, the Shabab’s full name. Gettleman’s article included this passage early on in its account:

But terrorism experts say that Twitter terrorism is part of an emerging trend and that several other Qaeda franchises — a few years ago the Shabab pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda — are increasingly using social media like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter.

That has to be the single most amusing phrase ever to appear unironically in the Paper of Record: Twitter terrorism. And, of course, the authority cited for this menacing trend is that ubiquitous sham community calling itself “terrorism experts,” which exists to provide the imprimatur of scholarly Seriousness on every last bit of inane fear-mongering hysteria. That cottage industry (like the government’s demands for greater power and Endless War) remains vibrant only if Terrorism does (that is, Terrorism by Muslims: a propagandistic redundancy). Thus, with Osama bin Laden dead, a full decade elapsed since the last successful Terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and the original Al Qaeda group rendered inoperable, these experts are now warning the nation about lurking sleeper tweets.

Click here for the full report.

Charlie Sheen’s Tweets Could Make Him Millions

March 4th, 2011

PopEater.com

By: Jo Piazza

Charlie Sheen is going to be the richest unemployed winner in Hollywood. The actor has accepted a gig with Ad.ly to start tweeting endorsements. The company already pays around 1,000 celebrities to tweet about brands.

Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh told The Hollywood Reporter that Sheen could become the company’s most valuable asset, a title currently held by reality starlet Kim Kardashian.

The Ad.ly model works by paying celebrities between $200 and $25,000 to tweet on behalf of advertisers. The brands in turn get the exposure from a celebrity’s wide-ranging feed of followers as well as the cache of being associated with someone famous.

It was Sheen’s record-setting Twitter bull run that really got Singh’s attention. The out-of-work actor gained more than 1 million followers in the first day he was on the social media site.

That’s a nice base to be sure, but Ad.ly and Sheen might not want to start swimming in their hundred dollar bills just yet.

In order for this money-making scheme to work, brands need to want to be associated with Sheen. Granted there are certain brands that will have no problem aligning themselves with the bad boy just for the exposure it will bring them. But Ad.ly’s big dog clients — Sony, Microsoft, Lionsgate and Old Navy to name a few — may think twice before opting to co-brand with the mad man who is flaunting his polyamorous relationship all over the media and bragging about banging back 7-gram rocks of cocaine.

We actually can’t wait to see who and what hops aboard the Sheen gravy train.

Click here for the full report from PopEater.com

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