EFF Sues Federal Government Regarding Surveillance of Social Networking Sites

On December 1, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that it had filed suit against six government agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, Central Intelligence Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The EFF is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization that was founded in 1990 to safeguard freedom of speech and other civil liberties in developing communications technologies such as the Internet.

During October and November of this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation had filed Freedom of Information Act requests concerning "federal guidelines on the use of social networking sites [...] for investigative or data gathering purposes," but none of these agencies processed those requests.

The lawsuit is an attempt to disclose information regarding the use of social networking sites like Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook "as investigative, surveillance, and data collection tools." The lawsuit alleges that all of these government agencies use social networking sites to gather information about suspects and that information about the procedures and restrictions for doing so have been wrongfully withheld from the public.

The users of social networking sites voluntarily reveal large amounts of personal information about themselves and the unrestricted use of these websites as investigative tools could pose a substantial invasion of privacy. As Shane Witnov, a law student working on the case, commented, "Internet users deserve to know what information is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it."