Homeland Security and law enforcement monitors Tweets.

Tracking the Twitter activity of law-abiding citizens was part of the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security’s intelligence surveillance program.

According to internal Homeland Security e-mails produced through a Right-To-Know request, one of the targets of such surveillance was the Berks Peace Community, a 50-year-old group of Quaker-affiliated senior citizens. They gather on the Penn Street Bridge in Reading every Friday and quietly hold signs questioning America’s “war habit.”

The e-mails also indicate that monitoring the tweets of law-abiding citizens was “part of the intelligence effort that is conducted daily... on behalf of the PA Office of Homeland Security.”

Those were the words of Mark Perelman, co-founder of the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, the contractor hired by Homeland Security to provide intelligence for the state.

“Law enforcement monitored Twitter accounts during the G-20 to get certain types of information because it is public access,” Finn said. “It is not private information.”

Finn said the Twitter monitoring allowed police to know what was happening on the ground and gave them better “situational awareness.”



Link:
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/11/big_brother_monitored_tweets_t.html