DHS Will Monitor Twitter and Blogs During 2010 Winter Olympics

The Department of Homeland Security will be monitoring Twitter, Google, and the blogs for up-to-the-minute information during the 2010 Winter Olympics. According to a statement recently released by the DHS, knowing what people are Tweeting, searching, and commenting about will “provide situational awareness” should terror or a natural disaster strike.

ABC News:

The National Operations Center of DHS will watch the web for information, according to the statement, to “provide situational awareness” in the event of natural disaster, an “act of terrorism, or other manmade disaster.” “The Olympics are a potential target for such events,” said a DHS statement, which did not list all websites and social media that the they are monitoring, but provided 31 examples. Some of the websites listed included the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, Google, and ABC’s Blotter.

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The statement also says that while some personally identifiable information (PII) could be obtained during the monitoring of the web sites, DHS guidelines require it to destroy the information. But the statement adds that the information is already widely available in the public domain.

(Blotter via The Daily What)