Test Terrorist Tracking With Social Media Game

[raven818]

U.S. Wants You to Test Terrorist Tracking With Social Media Game

The U.S. government wants to more aggressively track terrorists on social media — and it’s asking for your help.

The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Prague are sponsoring a social media gaming contest to test ways social media and open source data can be used to track terrorists and locate missing children.

( uh-huh, missing kids and terrorists, uh-huh..everybody wants to do that, huh? )

The FBI announced last month it plans to develop an app to monitor public social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and this game shows the government is still looking for ways to expand its social media tracking abilities.

Tag Challenge, the social media game, will be played by people in Washington D.C., New York City, London, Stockholm, Sweden and Bratislava, Slovakia on March 31.

Here’s how the game works . Profiles and mugshots of five suspects in each city will be posted on Tag Challenge. Players will have an entire day to locate the suspects in a public area of their city. The suspects will be wearing a t-shirt with the Tag Challenge logo. Suspects are not real-life crime suspects. The first player to upload photos of each of the five suspects to the Tag Challenge website will win $5,000.

Players can team up with other players, but only one person will be rewarded the cash prize. Although funded by the State Department, the contest page says the game is “not associated with any law enforcement agency, and the contest is not part of any law enforcement effort.” Graduate students from six countries who participated in social media and security conferences organized the game out of curiosity and for fun.

The game will offer government officials insight to “whether and how social media can be used to accomplish a realistic, time-sensitive, international law enforcement goal,” the Tag Challenge website says. “Results, strategies, and any data derived from the event will be made public after its conclusion.”

Yes sir boys and girls, nothing at all to do with any law enforcement agency. Nope, all fun and games.......Had this have been an actual test for the feds, you would have been instructed to bend over and kiss your a$$ goodby.

Can you say BS, boys and girls...I knew you could.

[jack404]

so am i now legally allowed to hack into all those CCTV camera's the US has all over to spot these folks ? ( upload the tag and picture match all the CCTV via the system)

and get $5000 for doing so ??

[raven818]

Originally Posted by jack404

so am i now legally allowed to hack into all those CCTV camera's the US has all over to spot these folks ? ( upload the tag and picture match all the CCTV via the system)

and get $5000 for doing so ??

Sounds like you probably can.

Imagine...they're going to get this tool tested and enhanced, for free. Folks will be lined up to play. Gerbils.

[BlackEagle]

Originally Posted by jack404

so am i now legally allowed to hack into all those CCTV camera's the US has all over to spot these folks ? ( upload the tag and picture match all the CCTV via the system)

and get $5000 for doing so ??

Should take about 5 minutes for London, with all the CCTV there.

[raven818]

Originally Posted by raven818

Sounds like you probably can.

Imagine...they're going to get this tool tested and enhanced, for free. Folks will be lined up to play. Gerbils.

Make that Lemmings.

[jack404]

and all the UK camera are tied into one system , and no firewalls so anyone can access them if they know the IP addy's on the network

[BlackEagle]

Quick five grand for Anonymous?

[jack404]

that makes mores sense

[raven818]

A follow up to the OP:

I've highlighted what I feel are double-speak wording, just to get anyone reading this to see if it gets you to thinking the words are a bit like...does this dress make me look fat.

Sorta like the remark below...what is published information anyway? I believe anything and everything posted by anyone, anywhere, is published information the minute it goes virtual...or, maybe it's just me.

2/16/12
FBI seeks developers for app to track suspicious social media posts, sparking privacy concerns

The FBI is getting in on the law enforcement app game on the heels of a controversial data mining project by the Homeland Security Department.

Documents recently posted on line seek industry input to develop the equivalent of a web alert system.

“I think what you are looking at is a Google news feed specifically targeted for law enforcement, focusing on their specific needs,” Frank Ciluffo, who leads George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, told Fox News..“We're on our mobile phones and we're on our various iPhones, BlackBerrys and the like that transmits data that locates individuals.”

The 12-page document, called "FBI Social Media Application," provides a detailed picture of the bureau’s specifications. The program must have the ability "to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence ... to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

Ciluffo, who was also a former adviser in the George W. Bush White House, said tracking social media is the tip of the spear for national security investigations and it raises privacy questions, over whether law enforcement officers are allowed to monitor public social media posts.

“If you’re in law enforcement's shoes, and certainly if you've got a counterterrorism organization, I wouldn't see why they should feel that anyone else can monitor but they can't,” he said.

Ciluffo said technology is running way ahead, and the government is about to meet the new social network. “We’ve got to figure what is the right balance between privacy and security. And I'm not sure we, as a country, have addressed that question. When you're dealing with known foreign terrorist organizations and sympathizers and known terrorists, to me that's a cut-and-dry kind of case.”

According to the ACLU, who reviewed the FBI documents for Fox News, information pulled from sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs could be cross referenced with other databases to identify potential threats. Mike German, a former FBI agent who runs the National Security section of the civil liberties group, says the data could be used to increase video surveillance in a neighborhood. German argues fundamental issues are not being addressed.

“Even where you're talking about

published information, information people intentionally put out there on the Internet

, we still have a right not to have that monitored by the government. The government really doesn't have any interest in tracking someone's Twitter account if they're not doing something wrong or suspected of doing something wrong.”

And German says the information can lead, in some cases, to questioning by federal officers, and getting rid of the “cloud of suspicion” can become virtually impossible. “Part of what we want to protect is the freedom to speak your mind, to criticize government policies without fear that the government will take it the wrong way and start treating you as if you're a threat.”

The FBI told Fox News in a statement that the project was in the research stage, and if it goes ahead, it “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.”

Fox News asked Facebook and Twitter for comment in an effort to learn whether they would support the FBI program or opt out. Facebook thanked Fox News for the opportunity but had nothing to add. Twitter did not immediately respond.