U.S. government using social networks to spy on its citizens

Sunday, October 17, 2010

U.S. government using social networks to spy on its citizens

Claims of the U.S. government using social networks to spy on its citizens have emerged in recent times while an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) freedom of information request uncovered a memo encouraging agents to try to befriend people on a variety of social networks. EFF says that the government is spying on Twitter, MySpace, Craigslist and Wikipedia.

It is said that the move is aiming at the prevention of Narcissistic tendencies among the people. Through these networking sites users share the link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know.
Once they have been accepted, these agents take advantage of the user's readiness to share, and to also spy on them. According to EFF, this memo suggests there's nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date off-hand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full citizenship investigation.