US federal intelligence agency FBI is now seeking companies to develop software to enable it to constantly track social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, reports The Guardian and Daily Mail.

According to The Guardian, the FBI has quietly published a request for information (RFI) for companies that might help it build a new social network monitoring system looking at "publicly available" information.

The RFI calls on companies to develop a "secure, light weight web application" for the FBI's strategic information and operations center (SIOC). "

In addition, the FBI is looking for a software that can scan social networks for ‘danger’ words—and agents will respond to ‘breaking news, incidents and emerging threats’.

Agents will be able to see people’s tweets on a map—and could use the software to ‘predict’ crimes.

However, many privacy campaigners have described it as an attack on free speech.

"Social networks are about connecting people with other people," a spokesman from Privacy International told the BBC.

"If one person is the target of police monitoring, there will be a dragnet effect in which dozens, even hundreds, of innocent users also come under surveillance".

But as the FBI stated in its RFI: "Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations".





[via The Guardian]


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