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The Government Is Monitoring Facebook And Twitter By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-12-14 11:59 "The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters." So ominously began an editorial [1] in Sunday's New York Times. Those with accounts at such websites should pay attention, for according to the Times, and other sources, Big Brother is watching you: The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of...

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar says human beings can have no more than 150 friends – that’s the upper limit the brain can absorb. His conclusion comes from studying the social group size of monkeys and apes and how that size might relate to the brain. Initially Dunbar was examining why primates groom each other. If the reason involved sexual bonding, it should correspond to “the social brain hypothesis” that the reason primates have a large brain is because of their social complexity. In other words, you need a large brain to keep track of your relationships. Humans, he says, are...

The Orlando International Airport TSA security officer arrested on charges of molesting a minor is a fan of bondage and sadomasochism, according to his MySpace page. Charles Henry Bennett's MySpace profile identifies him as "Master Charles or Sir." The online page shows the 57-year-old airport security guard has "many years experience" as a bondage and sadomasochism master and is looking to meet people, especially "submissive females." Officials with the Transportation Security Administration today said Bennett has been working security at the airport since 2002. A spokeswoman at the federal agency said officials are investigating the allegations.

A perverted Transportation Security Administration employee's alleged plot to turn a 15-year-old girl into his "sex slave" was foiled after his arrest for abusing the teen, according to cops in Florida. Charles Henry Bennett was arrested Friday after the girl came forward claiming she'd been molested by the suspect when she was 12, Orlando TV station WKMG reports. The 57-year-old Bennett acknowledges he "groped" the girl, according to the station, citing a police report. But the girl's version of the encounter is reportedly more graphic. On a MySpace page that apparently belongs to Bennett, he says he is a S&M-oriented...

Two Indiana teenagers have sued their school district after they were punished for posing suggestive photos on MySpace. The girls, 10th-graders at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, Indiana, say they were humiliated after the school banned them from fall semester extracurricular activities and forced them to apologize to the all-male Athletics Board (composed of varsity coaches). The girls also had to attend three counseling sessions. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the girls and all present and future students at the school who participate or may participate in extracurricular activities. The ACLU...

A SATANIST obsessed with teenage schoolgirls invented a fake gothic society online to groom them for sex in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery. Daniel William Peckham, 24, lured at least three girls, aged from 13 to 17, into the cemetery on his MySpace blog, "Rookwood Gothic Society". A message on the site read: "If you have hang-ups about getting naked ... you are not welcome." Peckham pleaded guilty yesterday to the aggravated sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl and to using the internet to solicit and transmit naked pictures of young girls between 2005 and 2007. The opening day...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1ST, 2009 AT 1:59 PM New Media Roundup From Across the Administration Posted by Katie Stanton Over the past few weeks, our colleagues from across the Administration have been busy leveraging social media tools to help make government more open and transparent. Here's a quick roundup of new ways to connect and get the latest updates from across the Administration: Today, the Department of Justice announced the launch of the new Justice.gov and new profiles on Twitter, YouTube , MySpace and Facebook. Yesterday, Secretary Salazar...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Sept. 28, 2009) — When the Missouri National Guard delved into the world of social media in February by launching Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace pages all within a single month, no one could predict the impact the sites would have on the way the Guard did business as usual. The one thing everyone was certain of, however, was that the online media movement was much too big to ignore. “Utilizing new media is a great way to spread our messages,” said adjutant general Brig. Gen. Stephen Danner. “It is important that the Missouri National Guard has...

Hey, physicians-in-training: Blabbing about patient care on Facebook and Twitter are Doctor No-Nos. A new survey of medical-school deans reveals that med students' unprofessional conduct on social networking sites and blogs is common, according to Time magazine. Many of the future doctors use YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook to discuss sexual misconduct, post discriminatory statements and talk about patient cases, according to the survey, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's ongoing even though the students understand patient-confidentiality laws and have been instructed in the ethical standards of their chosen profession, according to the article...

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet. Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information. "The White House has not been adequately...

The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House "maintains a presence" – for a period of up to eight years.

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

President Obama's White House does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to personal information and the Internet. In less than one month, the president's new media team has come under fire for asking citizens to report "fishy e-mails" about Obama's health care reform plan and for e-mail messages from David Axelrod that somehow went to people who did not sign up for them.So when the Executive Office of the President seeks a contractor to archive the usernames and possibly other data from social network users, it is certainly worth asking them why. We did. We have not...

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.” In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation...

(CNSNews.com) – Anyone who posts comments on the White House’s Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter pages will have their statements captured and permanently archived by the federal government, according to a plan that the White House is now seeking a contractor to carry out. The Executive Office of the President is looking for a private contractor to capture and archive comments and information posted on social networking and new media sites where the White House has established a presence. While the Presidential Records Act (PRA) generally requires that the administration preserve information generated by the president and his staff, the...

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation #...

Judging by some of the responses I've received to the previous posts in this health care series, I think it's important to make it clear that the illustrative features I talked about in my last post are not suggested components of some government run health care scheme. I oppose the government takeover of the health sector. It should also be clear from the ideas I've outlined that I oppose perpetuating the third party payer system in any form, whether as a single payer government run approach, or in continuation of the existing private corporate structure. One of the keys to...

Elizabeth Ann Thrasher is being prosecuted under the Missouri felony harassment statute passed in the wake of the Lori Drew case. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: Elizabeth A. Thrasher, 40, [was involved in] online [bickering] with the 17-year-old daughter of a woman Thrasher's ex-husband was dating.... The teen [then] sent a MySpace message to Thrasher, telling her to grow up. Thrasher ... then created a listing on Craigslist's Casual Encounters section, investigators said. The listing included the teen's picture, employer, e-mail address and cell phone number. Banas said the posting's language would lead people to believe it was an invitation...

I’m highly insulted that I have to discover the purported real age of the president of the United States of America on that official government source, his MySpace page. However by this correction alone Barack Hussein Obama has just set in motion events that will rock this Nation to its core. This is a blockbuster revelation. That’s right! With all of the Obama supports who have called everyday Americans the Liberal coined pejorative “birthers” because we have dared to ask to see some solid evidence about events surrounding Obama’s birth (as if these sycophants knew the truth) the shamelessness of...

If President Obama was born in Hawaii was it while the islands yet remained a territory of the United States? A new wrinkle in the dispute over his birth – and whether he is eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution's requirement that the president be none other than a "natural born" citizen – appeared today when Obama's MySpace page confirmed his age is 52. That would mean if he was born on the islands that now make up the state of Hawaii it would have been during the archipelago's days as a territory for the United States, the...