Play Smart: Big Brother is Watching
Remember playing cops and robbers? It was always fun and games–until someone took their pretend law enforcement job a little bit too seriously. You might have mimicked the latest episode of NYPD Blue or acted out Uncle Joe’s tales from patrolling the streets. Somehow the backyard drama of skinned knees and bloody noses paled in comparison to the glamour of real detective work.
But on March 31, 2012, the government will be taking a closer look at the way people play detective. Starting at 8:00 a.m. in five cities across the world, Tag Challenge participants will compete to track and identify a faux criminal suspect.
The first individual to upload a photograph of the contest’s suspect will be eligible to win a cash prize of $5,000. Funded and supported by the US State Department and the US Embassy in Prague, the social media game will be played by people in Washington D.C., New York City, London, Stockholm, Sweden and Bratislava, Slovakia. As a condition of participation, the winner in each city must agree to provide contest organizers with the strategies and methods used in the event.
While the contest rules make it explicitly clear that the contest is not associated with any official law enforcement efforts, the contest illustrates a trend in government curiosity in social media use.
Government agencies—most notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—are looking for ways to optimize the ubiquitous social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. On January 19th, the FBI posted a Request for Information (RFI) looking for market research on the social media industry’s ability to provide real-time and cached data to law enforcement.
The FBI is understandably reticent to reveal the full scope of its social media data-mining. The watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed Freedom of Information requests related to the agency’s social media search warrants. In a January 24th blog post, EEF’s Jennifer Lynch notes the following:
The draft search warrants are particularly interesting because they show the full extent of data the government regularly requests on a person it’s investigating. This includes not just your full profile information but also who you “poke” (and presumably who “pokes” you), who rejects your friend requests, which apps you use, what music you listen to, your privacy settings, all photos you upload as well as any photos you’re tagged in (whether or not you upload them), who’s in each of your Facebook groups, and IP logs that can show if and when you viewed a specific profile and from what IP address you did so.
On January 25th, the New Scientist One Per Cent blog noted the FBI’s official statement on the scope and intent this social media project:
The intent is to view publicly available open source, non-private social data that is readily available on the open internet. The application will not focus on specific persons or protected groups, but on words that relate to "events" and "crisis," and activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security. Examples of these words will include lockdown, bomb, suspicious package, white powder, active shoot, school lock down, etc.
The FBI uses publicly available open source information to identify immediate or emerging threats to national security or violations of federal criminal laws, to provide situational awareness and to establish a common operating picture. The type of social media application being researched by the FBI, to view publicly available information, is no different than applications used by other government agencies.
The FBI’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Unit will review the legal implications of the application and ensure that we meet all privacy requirements prior to the application being implemented.
And while the FBI’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Unit reviews the legal implications of its projects, some of us might just be taking to the streets to track a (fake) criminal suspect—Facebooking, texting, and Tweeting all the way.
Jessica Prol is a freelance writer, residing in Washington, DC. She also serves as the Managing Editor for Policy Publications and Policy Events Coordinator at the Family Research Council (FRC) . Ms. Prol has served three Members of Congress and coordinated marketing efforts for a variety of other local think-tanks and nonprofits.
