Via Bloomberg Law:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to monitor hundreds of thousands of news sources around the world and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top “media influencers.”
It’s seeking a contractor that can help it monitor traditional news sources as well as social media and identify “any and all” coverage related to the agency or a particular event, according to a request for information released April 3.
The data to be collected includes a publication’s “sentiment” as well as geographical spread, top posters, languages, momentum, and circulation. No value for the contract was disclosed. DHS agencies have “a critical need to incorporate these functions into their programs in order to better reach federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners,” it said
On May 3, UNESCO will once again mark World Press Freedom Day “to inform citizens of violations of press freedom — a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered.
Looks like we may shortly be adding America to that list.
We have traded our security for our liberty and the freedoms guaranteed in the bill of rights. The broadly written mandates of Homeland Security. Allow the attorney general’s office with it’s Pfizer court as it’s instrument unfettered access to our privacy. In the 80’s security analyst s would tell anyone that listened that cutting the CIA budget would only lead to an intelligence breakdown.That they needed increased ,embedded intelligence in the Middle East and to maintain a presence in Russia even after the Wall fell.So now we are reacting to the crisis not acting. We are playing catch up. What we need to decide is the value of having BIG BROTHER watching. I believe we do not need walls we need intelligence in the field. We need to pull our heads from the sand and be vigilant.