The U.S. Army's Protective Services Battalion, tasked with protecting senior military commanders, reportedly expanded its surveillance capabilities to include monitoring social media for threats and identifying negative attitudes toward high-ranking military officers.
A bid form reveals that the agency uses sophisticated surveillance tools to detect online threats, locate individuals and collect publicly available information. This expansion of the unit's powers highlights the increasing attention national security agencies are paying to social networks to counter disinformation.
While there may be valid reasons to intrude on someone's privacy to gather information related to serious crimes or terrorist threats, privacy advocates argue that expressing opinions or forming value judgments, especially about public officials, is a fundamental aspect of democratic society and should not be grounds for surveillance operations. The ability to criticize and express feelings, whether positive or negative, should not be abridged by government agencies.
"There may be legally valid reasons to violate someone's privacy by searching, collecting and analyzing publicly available information, especially when it comes to serious crimes and terrorist threats," Privacy International program director Ilia Siatitsa told U.S. media.
However, he stresses that "expressing positive or negative opinions towards a high-risk individual" cannot be considered sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations, going so far as to 'pinpoint the exact location' of individuals.
"The ability to express opinions, criticize, make assumptions or form value judgments - especially in relation to public officials - is an essential part of democratic society," Siatitsa added.
Protective details, such as those provided to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, have drawn criticism in the past because of their high costs and doubts about their necessity.
The bid document suggests that the battalion intends to acquire tools that can not only detect online threats, but also pinpoint a person's exact location using various surveillance techniques and data sources.
The document mentions accessing social media platforms such as 4Chan, Reddit, YouTube and VKontakte, as well as internet chat platforms such as Discord and Telegram, to identify terrorists, extremists and radicals.
The battalion aims to combine social media data with publicly and non-publicly available information, such as recordings from security cameras, radio stations, media outlets, personal records, hacked information, webcams and even cell phone location data. The use of geo-fencing data and misattribution techniques is also emphasized.
The suite of measures described in the report goes beyond what private contractors offer, as it aims to combine a wide range of surveillance capabilities and conceal the Army's presence on the Internet.
Through the use of "misattribution," the Army intends to deceive others about its true identity while surveilling the network, including spoofing web browser information and relaying internet traffic through foreign servers.
The dossier further reveals that the Army awarded the contract to SEWP Solutions, a federal software vendor that had previously sold surveillance tools to the Defense Department.
It is not yet clear whether the techniques provided by SEWP are part of the Berber Hunter toolkit, which includes programs from Babel Street, Echosec and Zignal Labs, among others. Flashpoint Intel, the parent company of Echosec, was reportedly involved in intelligence work related to protests and infiltration of private chat rooms.
Privacy advocates warn that the unregulated use of open source intelligence and widespread data collection could lead to abuses and interfere with individuals' right to privacy.
As national security agencies increasingly turn to social network surveillance, concerns are growing about its impact on democratic values and civil liberties.
