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United States Government Privacy Social Networks

DHS Launches Warning System To Find Domestic Terrorism Threats On Public Social Media (nbcnews.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the avoiding-the-next-insurrection dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security has begun implementing a strategy to gather and analyze intelligence about security threats from public social media posts, DHS officials said. The goal is to build a warning system to detect the sort of posts that appeared to predict an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 but were missed or ignored by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the officials said. The focus is not on the identity of the posters but rather on gleaning insights about potential security threats based on emerging narratives and grievances. So far, DHS is using human beings, not computer algorithms, to make sense of the data, the officials said. "We're not looking at who are the individual posters," said a senior official involved in the effort. "We are looking at what narratives are resonating and spreading across platforms. From there you may be able to determine what are the potential targets you need to protect."

The officials didn't describe what criteria or methods the analysts would use to parse the data. They said DHS officials have been consulting with social media companies, private companies and nonprofit groups that analyze open-source social media data. Law enforcement officers and intelligence analysts are legally entitled to examine -- without warrants -- what people say openly on Twitter, Facebook and other public social media forums, just as they can take in information from reading newspapers. But civil liberties groups generally oppose government monitoring of social media, arguing that it doesn't produce much intelligence and risks chilling free speech.
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DHS Launches Warning System To Find Domestic Terrorism Threats On Public Social Media More

DHS Launches Warning System To Find Domestic Terrorism Threats On Public Social Media

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  • Uh... send them to the NSA. They'll teach um how to do the dirty wearing a white hat.

  • On the one hand, this sort of big-brother approach to people's speech inevitably leads to government agents surveilling people based on nothing more than the beliefs they espouse, creating a chilling effect on free speech.

    On the other hand, the free speech they will be chilling will be Facebook and Twitter.

    It's super-hard to know who to root for here.

    • And this has happened since before the constitution was ratified. Sure, it's fine and dandy to surveil groups we don't like but how dare you monitor what my favorite groups are doing!

      Speaking of, J Edgar Hoover become FBI director 97 years ago today.

      • "Speaking of, J Edgar Hoover become FBI director 97 years ago today."

        Excellent related trivia!
        Very Nice ;)

        • Mr. Hoover set precedents, as a bisexual cross-dresser concealing his own sexual proclivities while extorting others into cooperation with FBI investigations by investigating, and revealing, their own sexual behavior sexuality. He stripped the FBI of respect and justice, and focused them on "ringleaders" at the expense of justice for ordinary citizens.

          I'm old enough to remember him being in charge, and the abuses by the FBI under his leadershiip were not merely ugly but criminal.

  • Hard to find?! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 )

    Steve Bannon sat there every single day on Youtube with 50k+ people listening to his "War Room."

    On his show for months, he talked about how the election was stolen, the ballots were fake, and that people needed to storm the capitol. The chat was full of people going full steam about this.

    The hard part isn't finding this stuff, its when to take people seriously.

    --
    Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in societ

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      And then we have the Tucker Carlson defense, where the court is told by his boss, a news outlet, that no reasonable person should have taken what he said seriously.

      "No sir, not planning any insurrection, just spitballing for a role playing game session with my college buddies."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 )

      Steve Bannon sat there every single day on Youtube with 50k+ people listening to his "War Room."

      On his show for months, he talked about how the election was stolen, the ballots were fake, and that people needed to storm the capitol. The chat was full of people going full steam about this.

      The hard part isn't finding this stuff, its when to take people seriously.

      --

      I know, right? It's not like they were being subtle and sneaky about it, like seizing territory and declaring it an "autonomous zone", or calling their movements cryptic names like "Occupy" and such.

  • Domestic Terrorism Threat (Score:5, Informative)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday May 10, 2021 @08:11PM (#61371356)
    is often a euphemism for the political opposition(a threat to the ones currently in power) not sure this is going in a good direction

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Often is a matter of perspective. But it's unquestionable that sometimes the domestic terrorist threat is a threat of violence against public figures or against the public for political ends.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Often is a matter of perspective. But it's unquestionable that sometimes the domestic terrorist threat is a threat of violence against public figures or against the public for political ends.

        They still call it an ‘“insurrection” despite the fact that none of the “insurrectionists” were carrying firearms. I mean, that’s how you stage a coup against a nation with s powerful military, right, you leave your guns back home or in the car.

        These are fully grown, educated adult

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They were gullible enough to believe Trump's lies.
          These aren't the sharpest of insurrectionists we're dealing with.

          When a stupid person gets caught attempting to murder someone. It's still attempted murder.

    • Only for those lacking in intellectual honesty. It's not even remotely reasonable to compare the riots after some BLM protests to the Jan 6. insurrection, for the leading example.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ttspttsp ( 7600944 )
        It is in different camps for sure, but I personally feel more impacted by BLM. In my small university town (where political demonstrations happen all the time) there were BLM protests after George Floyd. They were crazy violent, luckily no one was injured. What happened was that a bunch of violent people came in from out of town with weapons and ill-intent. I don't think that this is going to happen from the kookoo-bananas people that stormed the capitol. I think the people who came to my town are much
        • The Ironic part is this; The popular government opinion was the exact same thing until they stormed the capital and began hitting officers with heavy objects, threatening to restrain members of congress against their will and while in session. If they were not white the threat would have been eliminated . Now it seems that in response mass shootings are way up, asians are being attacked for no apparent reason, how likely is it that it's BLM engineering these latest crimes?... and people still argue that the

      • Only for those lacking in intellectual honesty. It's not even remotely reasonable to compare the riots after some BLM protests to the Jan 6. insurrection, for the leading example.

        Exhibit A.

        It’s like watching someone with schizophrenia yelling at someone with bipolar saying ‘you’re the crazy one! if you were sane like me you’d know that!”

        These are people pathologically unable to look in the mirror and expound on their own flaws.

        Okay, owner of intellectual honesty, in the last 3

    • Right. People like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Thank god they're all morons and get caught.

    • If we were to accept the proposition that domestic terrorism is a euphemism for the political opposition then it would be impossible for any organization to investigate domestic terrorism. This would cripple our ability to maintain public order. Consequently, this notion must be rejected.

      Public order is essential so we need to allow the government to investigate domestic terrorism. This means we need to give them the tools to do that. We can prevent abuses of power by encumbering the tools with limits. Th

  • The threat to The Republic is inside.

  • Dear DHS:

    If you wish to keep tabs on what people are saying online, you probably shouldn't start by telling them everything they put online is being monitored, analyzed and cataloged. The smarter ones already know so you'll never catch any of their chatter, but you might have had a chance at getting the slower ones. Law Enforcement has become so lazy and addicted to relying on technology to do their work for them that they don't really know how to do their job without it any more. That will be a very pai

  • "We're not looking at who are the individual posters," said a senior official involved in the effort.

    If only there was a way to arrest domestic terrorists by identifying those individuals who post domestic terrorism threats. Oh well, too bad we'll never find them.

  • They had children denouce on their own parents, mothers and fathers on their kids, and the worst of all: Their version of Uncle Toms, being everybody's best buddy but secretly "purging" their community.

    The main goal was actually not that. It was that you could not trust anybody anymore, and so everybody was kept obedient, with very little work. The goal was fear.

    Make no mistake: Yes, there will be 1% actual domestic terrorists that should be stopped. But there will be 99% people that just displeased some as

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