Is this something to be concerned about?
The recent headline at DrudgeReport is "‘HOMELAND SECURITY’ MONITORING DRUDGE
‘WILL RETAIN INFORMATION’ which links to the Atlantic Wire with a breakdown of who’s being monitored:
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Blogs, The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, The New, York Times’s Lede blog, Wired’s Threat Level, Wired’s Danger Room, ABC News’…and more.
Do you think the DHS is doing this to keep us safe or for some nefarious political reasons?
Now you’ve done it. Add Straight Dope to the list. :mad:
Nefarious political reasons; they’ve never cared about making us safe. Politics is what they were created for.
Government reads newspapers! What kind of Orwellian world do we live in?
Somebody got their bosses to sign off on them web-surfing all day under the guise of “monitoring.” 
There’s enough out there to be paranoid about without reaching for things like this.
and Facebook, Twitter, etc.
It’s sort of hard to say it’s just for news content when they’re culling social networks.
A snippet from the article, that’s difficult to decipher:
[snip]
"Based on a privacy compliance review from last November recently obtained by Reuters, the purpose of the project is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”[/snip]
Exactly. No doubt, somewhere in the bawls of the government there are folks monitoring porn sites “for public safety” and traveling to Los Vegas to conduct interviews of suspicious characters. I know I feel so much safer.
Why wouldn’t we want them to be on top of what’s going on in the real world?
I’m not against them scouring the news every day, they are supposed to do that. I’m uncomfortable with them grabbing people’s social networking info, comments, etc.
Seems like a massive abuse of power around the corner.
As I read the article, they are looking at publicly available news and social networking sites. I guess when I look at a Facebook page, I am “social networking.” If the government does it, it is “culling.”
Unless more comes out about this story, I’m inclined to say that I don’t see a problem with the government looking at public information, even if it is on teh Internets.
I can remember an eighteen month FBI operation on prostitution in New Orleans that arrested something like a half dozen hookers. I’ve been to New Orleans and could have turned up twice that many on my way to pick up a breakfast beignet.
That is correct. Unless of course DHS is sending out friend requests. 
“We’re from the government and we’re here to [del]help[/del] be your friend.”