Govt Facebook Spying For Citizenship Fraud

The U.S. government has been encouraging its employees to spy on people, particularly those who may be dealing with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, via social networks like Facebook. The memo was released a while ago, check out what it says:

“…many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don’t even know. This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS [Fraud Detection and National Security] to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities. Generally, people on these sites speak honestly in their network because all of theirfriendsand family are interacting with them via lM’s (Instant Messages), Blogs (Weblog journals), etc. This social networking gives FDNS an opportunity to revealfraudby browsing these sites to see if petitioners and beneficiaries are in a valid relationship or are attempting to deceive CIS about their relationship. Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities. In essence, using MySpace [or social networks] is akin to doing an unannounced cyber ‘site-visit on a petitioners and beneficiaries.”

Ignoring for a second how horrible this person’s grammar is — they still are essentially advocating that people applying for U.S. citizenship, visas, etc. should be spied on by the government. They’re saying that when you update your status on Facebook, that should have a bearing on whether or not you get your paperwork. Someone who doesn’t understand the difference between singular and plural in English is giving orders to other people to bring you down because you may have Liked or re-Tweeted something offensive.

Notice how the memo doesn’t outline what, exactly, they should be looking for on these unannounced “site visits”?

[Image Courtesy Litsociety]

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