Feds Snooping Social Media Sites?

Big Brother is watching social networking sites, documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveal.

EFF reported the documents reveal two forms of tracking: First, surveillance of social networks to investigate applicants for citizenship, and second, the Homeland Security Department's use of a "social networking monitoring center" to collect and analyze public communication during the period of President Obama's inauguration.

A May 2008 memo (obtained by the EFF through a Freedom of Information Act request) by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of DHS, encourages security employees to "friend" citizenship petitioners on social networking sites as a means of ferreting out fraud.

"Many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know," the document says. "This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS (Office of Fraud Detection and National Security) to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."