Plans to continuously monitor the global output of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to light when the agency released a document detailing the plan.

The agency's social media application reads, "The Federal Bureau of Investigations is conducting market research to determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social-media application." The document, released last week, invited potential contractors to reply by early next month.

The monitoring system that the FBI is looking to build would automatically search public information and activity on social-media sites for relevant keywords related to cyber crime, terrorism, surveillance, and the like.

The FBI's description of the planned monitoring system states the agency has "determined that a geo-spatial alert and analysis mapping application is the best known solution for attaining and disseminating real time open source intelligence and improving the FBI's overall situational awareness."

Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the NewScientist that she worried what type of effect such a monitoring system would have on free speech in the social-media arena. She pointed out that many people post to social media in the expectation that only their friends and followers are reading. "But these tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy," Lynch told the NewScientist.

In other recent privacy news, yesterday Google announced a new privacy policy that lets it share user data across its services—and there's no option to opt out.

Social Media Application [FedBizOpps.gov]
FBI releases plans to monitor social networks [NewScientist]