The FBI Developing App To Monitor Social Media
Looks like Megaupload isn't the only thing under the feds' radar. The FBI is looking to develop a web application to monitor social networks and that includes Facebook and Twitter to gain a better real time intelligence about current or potential security threats and other situations.
This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a “Social Media Application.”
New Scientist picked up on the request, which aims to “determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social media application.”
The FBI lays out the requirements for the application that it is seeking to build. In the background portion of the document, the SIOC writes:
The FBI has conducted market research and determined that a geospatial alert and analysis mapping application is the best known solution for attaining and disseminating real time open source intelligence and improving the FBI’s overall situational awareness.
Check out the document embedded below. But before that here are the highlights of the document:
Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the defined search parameters.
Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).
Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the defined search parameters.
Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).
Social Media Application
