Secret Service wants Americans to spy on peoples' Tweets and report them.
The Secret Service has expanded its operation to Twitter, urging Americans to report on their fellow citizens whose tweets “concern you.”
“To report a tweet that concerns you, call the nearest field office in your state,” the Secret Service tweeted on Oct. 23. The agency then links to a list of contact numbers for Field Offices in each state.
The Secret Service sent another tweet on Wednesday, again asking its followers to report tweets.
“Contact your nearest field office with time-sensitive or critical info or to report a tweet,” it said.
The agency has accrued more than 44,000 followers since joining the social media platform on May 9, 2011. Twitter surpassed 500 million user accounts around the world earlier this year, 140 million of which are in the U.S.
Twitter has become a popular platform for political engagement, as demonstrated by the surge in tweets during the three presidential debates. Twitter reported that the first match-up between President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney on Oct. 3 was the “most tweeted-about event in U.S. politics,” with 10.3 million tweets and as many as 158,690 tweets per minute.
“By comparison, during the 2008 debates between Obama and John McCain, only 500,000 tweets were created total during all four debates,” according to PRO OnCall Technologies. “The first two minutes of the Obama/Romney debate saw two million tweets.”
In September, a North Carolina man was arrested for threatening to kill President Barack Obama on Twitter.
Intelligence agencies’ interest in social media is not a new phenomenon. The FBI and local police have for years regularly monitored and collected information on US citizens on Facebook and Twitter.
The FBI is reportedly attempting to create a system that would automatically monitor social media users. The bureau is attempting to build a network where ‘suspicious’ posts would be flagged and instantly reveal the user’s location to authorities.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/secret-service-asks-americans-report-tweets-concern-you
http://rt.com/usa/news/secret-service-twitter-threat-207/