Federal Agents Urged to 'Friend' People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals

I did a few searches and came up empty, so I thought I would post this here. If this is on here mods feel free to move / lock. (As a side note if you can fix the search feature that would be swell thanks).

Federal Agents Urged to 'Friend' People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals

privacy watchdog has uncovered a government memo that encourages federal agents to befriend people on a variety of social networks, to take advantage of their readiness to share -- and to spy on them. In response to a Freedom of Information request, the government released a handful of documents, including a May 2008 memo detailing how social-networking sites are exploited by the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS).

As of Thursday morning, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg had not commented on the report, which details the official government program to spy via social networking. Other websites the government is spying on include Twitter, MySpace, Craigslist and Wikipedia, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed the FOIA request.

I always wondered why I would get random Face Book friend requests. I guess this article explains that now. The farther we move into the Electronic age, the more weird it gets.

wonder why they didnt include google, the biggest spy of all.

That's just annoying. This government is so a**-backwards it makes me want to
I guess I'm ok in that area, I'm hesitant to accept family friend requests let alone people I don't even know.
It makes me mad though that sometimes I get paranoid or worry about somethings I write/post.. it shouldn't be like that. It's like the first amendment means nothing anymore. Sure, go ahead and say what you want, but be warned, you could get a government swat on the butt if you say the wrong thing. ugh

reply to post by RelentlessLurker


Why point out whats already known? Easier to have people forget by diverting their attention to this latest info mine.