FBI To Develop App To Retrieve Data From Social Networking Sites

It has been reported that the FBI is currently looking for a way to develop an early warning system based on information that it is able to gather from social networking sites.

The system is called scraping and it will allow the FBI to collate all sorts of information that it finds on the internet to work out potential domestic and global threats that it could be facing.

The FBI has put out a request to contractors to come up with such an app that would provide the solution for their request and also to come up with an estimated cost.

However some campaigners for internet privacy have said that such as app would compromise the freedom of speech on the internet and might also compromise people’s privacy whilst they are online

The request from the app came from the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Centre (SOIC) and was posted online as well as a request being printed in the New Scientist Magazine.

The FBI have stated that over recent years social media networks have become one of the primary sources of intelligence and as it is such a vast resource there needs to be a solution to help manage the huge amount of potentially useful information that flows through the internet on a daily basis.

The FBI wants to be able to scrape information and data from sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It justifies the app because it is a matter of national security.

Keywords will be used to help search out potential threats. These will then be filtered back to the FBI who will then work out which threats are credible and which are not.