Federal Contractor Monitored Social Network Sites

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/federal-security-program-monitored-public-opinion.html?hp

The Department of Homeland Security paid a contractor in 2009 to monitor social networking sites — like Facebook, blogs and reader comments on a news article — to see how the residents of Standish, Mich., were reacting to a proposal to move detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a local prison there, according to newly disclosed documents.

While it has long been known that the department monitors the Internet for information about emerging threats to public safety like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, the documents show that its Social Networking/Media Capability program, at least in an early stage, was also focused on “public reaction to major governmental proposals with homeland security implications.”

Still, the newly disclosed documents show that in August 2009, during an early test of the program, a contractor compiled reactions among residents of Standish, Mich., to the short-lived detainee proposal. It found that most people “were opposed to the plan,” arguing it could make the community a terrorist target, but that others characterized these concerns as “hysteria.”

To produce the report about Standish, the contractor used “Facebook, Twitter, three different blogs and reader comments” on an article on The Washington Post’s Web site, highlighting “public sentiments in extensive detail,” according to a summary of the report that was included as an example in a “Social Networking/Media Capability Analyst Handbook” dated February 2010.

Asked about the Standish report on Friday, department officials provided a series of explanations. After initially accepting it as something produced by the program, an official later said the report was instead created by a contractor as a sample during a period when the social networking component of its media monitoring program was still being designed. It started on a small scale in January 2010 and expanded the following June.

Ginger McCall, director of the group’s Open Government Program, said it was appropriate for the department to use the Internet to search for emerging threats to public safety. But, she said, monitoring what people are saying about government policies went too far and could chill free speech.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s monitoring of political dissent has no legal basis and is contrary to core First Amendment principles,” she said.

This week, Reuters reported on a department privacy review related to the monitoring efforts that described the news media channels the program covers. The Reuters report received significant attention after The Drudge Report, a popular news aggregation Web site, highlighted that Drudge was on the list.