A privacy watchdog has uncovered a government memo that encourages federal agents to befriend people on a variety of social networks, to take advantage of their readiness to share — and to spy on them. In response to a Freedom of Information request, the government released a handful of documents, including a May 2008 memo detailing how social-networking sites are exploited by the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS).

As of Thursday morning, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg had not commented on the report, which details the official government program to spy via social networking. Other websites the government is spying on include Twitter, MySpace, Craigslist and Wikipedia, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed the FOIA request.

“Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuel a need to have a large group of ‘friends’ link to their pages, and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don’t even know,” stated one of the documents obtained by the EFF. “This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities,” it said.

According to the EFF, this memo — which specifically details how the government evaluates potential citizen requests — suggests there’s nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date offhand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full investigation.

Full Story Here:
Federal Agents Urged to ‘Friend’ People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals

I have been a bit hesitant to write this piece. Let’s face facts, you NEVER know who is listening to your phone calls and who is truly reading your blog or forum.

Given the current political climate in America, the desperation of the Dems and Hussein Obama to hold power, the eagerness of the GOP to wrest power from the Dems, and the propensity of the GOP to LIE to the American people regarding the true intentions regarding Conservatism, I wouldn’t put it past ANY of the *alphabet agencies* to actively attempt to infiltrate groups like the TEA Party and try to paint us as ‘Unruly Insurgents’, they already have you know.

Yet some Republicans worry that tea-party candidates are settling too comfortably into their roles as unruly insurgents and could prove hard to manage if they get elected. Paul, who beat GOP establishment favorite Trey Grayson in Kentucky’s primary, told the National Review that he would seek to join forces with GOP Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.), “who are unafraid to stand up�? and who have blocked numerous bills advanced by both parties deemed by the pair as expanding government. SOURCE

Unruly Insurgents? Yeah, that’s ME…

Picture the cast of the new movie, RED: Retired Extremely Dangerous. That’s how the those in the U.S. government would like to portray us. All because we are fed up with the lies and what we all see as corruption in American politics.

So, we speak out, we assemble, peaceably, we petition our grievances and we are labeled as some kind of INSURGENCY. How convenient…we can be labeled and then watched because we are, after all, EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, to those that are intent on destroying America.

With this revelation, the government joins a growing list of groups using social-networking sites for purposes other than social networking. As these sites have gained popularity, scammers and spammers have become rampant, and hackers are increasingly turning to networks such as Facebook to spread viruses and Trojan Horses.

The EFF also uncovered efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to monitor social media during the inauguration of President Obama. According to the documents, the DHS collected a massive amount of data on individuals and organizations explicitly tied to the event.

I have a friend that was contacted by an old friend of his recently. That ‘friend’ is known to be in the military intelligence business. And before any of my buddies go there, yeah, I know, it’s a double redundancy, military and intelligence are words that just don’t go together. I digress.

So, my friend is contacted by his friend and asked about how to become actively involved in TEA Party groups. I am sure it was a pure coincidence that this request came 3 or 4 days before this article from FOX News was published.

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