According to a report from the Intercept, members of a secretive unit at the Pentagon who serve as a type of Secret Service for military leaders even after they retire, are also scouring social media for anything that could embarrass the officials they are tasked with protecting.
The report notes that the U.S. Army Protective Services Battalion provides security for high-ranking military officials and part of its job is looking for threats and tracking down anyone who could harm the officials before it happens.
However, as the Intercept is reporting, members of the security forces also go beyond looking out for "direct, indirect, and veiled” threats, they also are on the lookout for “negative sentiment” aimed at officials.
According to Ilia Siatitsa, program director at Privacy International, seeking out insulting tweets and Facebook complaints is going overboard.
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“There may be legally valid reasons to intrude on someone’s privacy by searching for, collecting, and analyzing publicly available information, particularly when it pertains to serious crimes and terrorist threats,” Siatitsa explained. “However, expressing ‘positive or negative sentiment towards a senior high-risk individual’ cannot be deemed sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations, even going as far as ‘pinpointing exact locations’ of individuals."
The report goes on to note that Pentagon has tried to keep the extent of its surveillance secret.
"According to the Protective Services Battalion document, the Army also does not want to advertise its interest in broad data collection. The redacted copy of the contract document, while public, is marked as CUI, for 'Controlled Unclassified Information,' and FEDCON, meant for federal employees and contractors only," the report states
That led Siatitsa to comment, "Left unregulated, open-source intelligence could lead to the kind of abuses observed in other forms of covert surveillance operations. The systematic collection, storage, and analysis of information posted online by law enforcement and governmental agencies constitutes a serious interference with the right to respect for private life.”
You can read more here.