For future reference.

The Department of Homeland Security Searches Your Facebook and Twitter for "Marijuana," Other Keywords

Recently released documents reveal that the Department of Homeland Security is keeping tabs on us via our social networks.

According to an internal DHS document released by theElectronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the department and/or a DHS subcontractor is searching social networks like Facebook and Twitter for all kinds of keywords, which are then made into reports about “items of interest” (IOI). The list of terms is HUGE, and according to the blog Animal New York, ”the DHS can also add additional search terms circumstantially as deemed necessary.”

(link via mohandasgandhi)

"Profanity is alive and well on Twitter, except in Utah, apparently. You’d expect heathen citydwellers to swear, and we do not disappoint, but the Bible belt is pretty foul-mouthed too (no word whether language there trended cleaner on Sundays). Thanks to tweets, blog comments and unlocked Facebook feeds, we know more than ever before about the way regular people—in New York, Detroit, Miami, Los Angeles, and the DMV—talk to each other, although everyone disagrees about the Internet’s effect on slang in general, and regional slang in particular."

A few months old, but this piece from the Awl that I must have missed about Twitter (and other social media) and local slang is worth your time.

"

“I’m in denial that I’m in a totalitarian society,” Huang told me over lunch in Beijing. “I’ll pretend I can function how I want to function and see how far I can get. I get messages from my followers whenever I state the obvious, saying, ‘Huang, be careful! We want you around!’”

Huang once posted the entire text (in 140-character excerpts) of a letter by controversial artist Ai Weiwei, who was detained by police last year and was allegedly tortured and intimidated before being released. As Huang weiboed, she and her millions of fans watched the posts go up and then, within seconds, come down. “It was fun,” she said. “It gave me adrenaline. In China you can be naughty and Big Brother still cares. In most countries, no one cares what you say.”

"

From Vanity Fair, a piece on China’s Twitter equivalent, Weibo, which is rapidly growing (250 million users right now, currently gaining around 10 million per month) and heavily censored. 

Department Of Homeland Security Tells Congress Why It's Monitoring Facebook, Twitter, Blogs

unexpectedtech:

At a Congressional hearing this morning that veered into contentious arguments and cringe-worthy moments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spilled the beans on their social media monitoring project.

DHS Chief Privacy Office Mary Ellen Callahan and Director of Operations Coordination and Planning Richard Chavez appeared to be deliberately stonewalling Congress on the depth, ubiquity, goals, and technical capabilities of the agency’s social media surveillance. At other times, they appeared to be themselves unsure about their own project’s ultimate goals and uses. But one thing is for sure: If you’re the first person to tweet about a news story, or if you’re a community activist who makes public Facebook posts—DHS will have your personal information.

The hearing, which was held by the Subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Intelligence headed by Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), was highly unusual. Hacktivist collective Anonymous (or at least the @AnonyOps Twitter feed) sent a sympathizer to the visitor gallery to liveblog the proceedings under the #spyback hashtag.

Journalists react to Twitter ‘censorship’ policy

muckrack:

The most–linked and commented item on MuckRack over the past 24 hours has been:

Tweets Must Still Flow, a post on the Twitter blog announcing the company’s “ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.”

The AP’s Michael Liedtke writes that the move “is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.”

Vikas Bajaj of the NYT tweets from Mumbai: “This should endear Twitter to some in the Indian govt.”

PBS’s Hari Sreenivasan tweeted: “Does this mean @twitter is willing to let governments or copyright holders #censor users?”

Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy magazine tweeted: “Booooo”, while Current’s Daniela Capistrano tweets, simply: “Caved.”

Anna Heim at The Next Web writes: “Worried about possible restrictions on Twitter? Here’s how to get around them.”

Interesting graph: The tweeting of the State of the Union.

(via soupsoup)

How false reports of Joe Paterno’s death were spread and debunked

News spread quickly Saturday evening that former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died. Except, he hadn’t. (Paterno’s family announced his death on Sunday morning.)

Here is an account of how the misinformation spread.

jtotheizzoe:

Twitter Tracks Cholera Outbreaks Faster Than Health Authorities

Shortly after the 2010 earthquake and hurricane that struck the country, Haiti was (and is) deeply immersed in an outbreak of cholera. Amazingly, social networks accurately tracked the spread of the disease, faster and more accurately than traditional tracking methods. As Rumi Chunara of Harvard Medical School details in CHE:

The social media matched the official reports very closely right at the start of the outbreak, in October 2010, and right after another surge when the hurricane hit, in early November. But the reports were ahead of the official records by two weeks. And with Twitter in particular, they identified the geographic locations of the cases “because a lot of people were Tweeting from their phones, right where they saw patients” in villages, Ms. Chunara said. Not all cholera patients go to hospitals to be counted officially, she noted.

It’s safe to assume that tracking a disease by social media alone wouldn’t be perfect, and further studies will be required to prove that this is a reliable method by which to base the distribution of medicine and supplies. Even a few days advantage can make a huge difference in an outbreak like this, though. By tracking real-time data, patients could be located and catalogued before they even saw a doctor.

I’m fascinated by the blossoming uses of geographic information coming out of Twitter’s API. Just this week, these infographics by Eric Fischer showed up on FastCo.Design:

You can practically re-draw traditional maps based on the density and geography of geotagged tweets. The possibilities for real-time information tracking seem endless (for good and evil). Any ideas?

(via The Chronicle of Higher Education, photo by AP)

U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship

EFF has witnessed a growing number of calls in recent weeks for Twitter to ban certain accounts of alleged terrorists. In a December 14th article in the New York Times, anonymous U.S. officials claimed they “may have the legal authority to demand that Twitter close” a Twitter account associated with the militant Somali group Al-Shabaab. A week later, the Telegraph reported that Sen. Joe Lieberman contacted Twitter to remove two “propaganda” accounts allegedly run by the Taliban. More recently, an Israeli law firm threatened to sue Twitter if they did not remove accounts run by Hezbollah.

(via futurejournalismproject)

(Source: eff.org)