FBI Needs To Track Social Media To Do Their Job Well, According to Quid CTO

The FBI recently sent out a request to tech companies asking for proposals in the development of a social media application. The bureau is seeking input for a system that would alert it of matters dealing with terrorism, crime, and anything else pertaining to national security.

Although the FBI has said that it would only utilize the "publicly available" information that users provide, some consumer groups have raised both privacy and free speech concerns. WebProNews spoke with Sean Gourley, the co-founder and CTO of quantitative analytics firm Quid, who told us that, while these concerns are "natural," it was also natural that the FBI would need to monitor social networking sites in order to better protect the country.

As he explained, government tracking has been around for a long time. Using social media to do it today is simply an evolution of technological advances. Gourley admits that it will be challenging but said the FBI needed to take advantage of the data on social media sites.

"The NSA Is Lying": U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails Says NSA Whistleblower

DemocracyNow.org - National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.

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Is Your Cell Phone Bugged? Phone Call Records

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY phone call records When you make a telephone call, it is never private. The reality is that the NSA has been monitoring all phone calls for years and years. According to USA Today, the NSA intends "to create a database of every call ever made"....United States, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no apparent reason whatsoever