President Barack Obama may promise social justice to naïve voters, but justice is apparently a foreign concept to Obama if it has to do with the US Constitution.
Obama’s Department of Homeland Security expanded an existing program, the Social Networking Media Capability, originally created to aid in the Haiti earthquake recovery and security related to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Obama’s expansion of the program is an invasive free-for-all. DHS now monitors public online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards “to collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”
DHS will understandably monitor foreign individuals “involving potential life or death circumstances.” However, DHS posted notice on the agency website that others will also be monitored (italics added):
2) senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates; 3) U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates; 4) U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates; 5) names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed; 6) current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security; and 7) terrorists, drug cartel leaders, or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest.
The information DHS collects will be subject to “further use and sharing.”
DHS has already had a mishap with “further use and sharing” information of this nature, admitting that on the agency website:
During a PCR preparatory self-inspection, MMC discovered that, between December 1, 2010 and August 22, 2011, twelve email reports (IOIs) inadvertently included unnecessary PII or potential PII…
PII stands for “personally identifiable information.”
Imagine blogging negatively about the Obama administration’s meeting with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation who praised the superiority of law based on “noble Sharia”, and a bureaucrat at DHS could decide to forward your personal information to officials at that organization.
This initiative is a natural product of the expansion of economic socialism Obama has undertaken as president. Socialism always leads to an erosion of personal liberty and human rights.
One of the only large media outlets to report on DHS’s snoop-share program was Russia Today. In the US, the liberal site Fast Company ran a brief story.
Fast Company said, "In-house media monitoring reports created by DHS are also being shared with private sector and international partners."
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