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Last week, as I was putting together a story about US government plans to monitor social networks, I came across some strange language in a proposal by the Department of State.

The department had asked software developers earlier this month to bid on a contract to build a system for collecting and analysing social media conversations - think Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs - of interest to the government. The plan was to use the information to better understand what people are saying about the US, and perhaps to head off groups who might pose a threat.

The part that jumped out at me was a clause buried in the supporting information. It stated that developers should make "a reasonable effort to exclude Americans from any and all analyses". It would probably be impossible to avoid collecting information on US citizens, since it is not exactly common practice to attach citizenship information to a tweet or forum comment. So why would the Department of State include such an onerous restriction in the solicitation?

When I asked for clarification, the department missed one deadline and then a second. Then, on 14 June, they withdrew the solicitation. They won't explain why, other than saying that the request had not been "properly vetted" and has been cancelled pending "further review" (the original solicitation is still online).

I don't know for sure what happened, but here's my guess: the Department of State isn't 100 per cent sure whether it can legally collect information on US citizens. Such activities are governed in part by the Privacy Act, which states that federal agencies cannot maintain records relating to rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In other words: citizens have the right to complain about governments and religion and many other things, and the department should not record them doing so.

This is only a hunch, in part because the law gets more complicated after this point. Anita Allen, an expert in privacy law at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, notes that the Privacy Act includes many exemptions. Subsequent national security laws further complicate the issue. And almost all the legislation is out of date with regards to the internet: the Privacy Act dates from 1974, and another key law, the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, was passed in 1986. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was 2 at the time.

So it's just a guess for now. Perhaps the Department of State does have the right to monitor US citizens. It'd be great to hear from an expert who can shed some light on the issue - or even someone at the department. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/06/us-government-bac
ks-off-social.html guess is they hoped they could slip that one past with a "clause buried in the supporting information", as a way of covering their asses, while what they really wanted was info on everyone; once caught out, they figured "oops, we'd better back off before someone starts hollering". JMHO.

Then I found this:

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The US government wants to monitor activity on social networks to get hints of political unrest

SATIRICAL newspaper The Onion recently described Facebook as a project of the Central Intelligence Agency. "After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded," a fictional agency deputy director told Congress. He was happy that Facebook users voluntarily post "alphabetized lists of all their friends" and "even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment". It is, he concluded, "truly a dream come true for the CIA".

The scenario is not that far from the truth. Facebook has close to a billion users, many of whom post daily updates on their thoughts and feelings. The same thing happens on Twitter. Foursquare users share information about their location. Commentators on news sites express opinions and outrage. And, as a New Scientist review of procurement requests shows, the US government is keen to take advantage of what amounts to a society of self-surveillance.

In a way, they are behind the curve - marketing firms already monitor social networks to gauge public reaction to product launches. And online chatter can be analysed to forecast election results, for example. US federal agencies want to harness these techniques in an attempt to gauge overseas opinion about America, or even get hints on how to head off terrorist activity.

With these aims in mind, officials at the Department of State issued a procurement notice on 1 June asking software developers to submit bids for a contract to supply tools that provide "deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web". These tools will analyse conversations taking place in at least seven foreign languages, including Chinese and Arabic.

Once the bids are in, the software systems will undergo a six-month trial in which they will examine online reaction to a specific event, such as a talk given by a US ambassador.

The military is even further along with such plans. In 2007, the US air force awarded defence giant Lockheed Martin a $27 million contract to develop the Web Information Spread Data Operations Module, or WISDOM, which analyses posts made to news forums, blogs and social media. Military analysts are already using it to monitor Central and South America and the Pacific region. Lockheed Martin is now upgrading WISDOM with a $9 million contract from the navy, which wants to "understand the latest regional trends and sentiment and predict threats from groups and individuals".

Other departments have similar plans - the FBI is talking to software vendors, and the Department of Homeland Security already has a monitoring system up and running.

How might such monitoring affect our online behaviour?

Imagine reading an article about US government policies and then wanting to post an angry comment. Would you pause if you knew the government would collect and store your comment and username? "This prevents people from speaking their minds," says Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC. "It quells dissent." One would hope government officials had such concerns in mind. It is difficult to say, however, because repeated attempts by New Scientist to obtain comments from the Department of State were met with silence. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428696.800-big-brother-is-watc
hing-facebook-and-twitter.html

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Shit.