A Little Bird Told Me: Feds monitor Twitter, other sites during crises

Done with his shift, Mario Ramirez walked out of a maquiladora in Reynosa, heading for the parking lot.

It had been an uneventful workday.

Then a firefight erupted.

Two groups of gunmen clashed near the maquila; the Mexican military soon entered the fray.

After rushing back into the safety of the plant with his co-workers, Ramirez called his wife to tell her to keep the kids inside and that he would be home late.

Then he texted his “brothers in cyberspace.”

“Shootout outside of the plant … armed gunmen and military, proceed with caution,” read the message he posted to the social media website, Twitter, where dozens of other users were staying informed on the firefight.

“This is what we had to do because the media doesn’t say anything,” Ramirez later told The Monitor. He asked not to be identified by his Twitter account name. “The government also doesn’t say what happens. All we get is an obscure message from the city’s account confirming a firefight or a grenade, but that is usually long after it already happened.

“We all stay in touch and are able to stay informed faster.”

Much like his “brothers,” the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring social media networks in an effort to gain real-time information.

Since last summer, the National Operations Center of the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning began monitoring publicly available social media, documents show.

The agency began operations into social media June 22, 2010, with the purpose of providing situational awareness, according to a Privacy Impact Assessment by DHS.

“Federal law requires the (National Operations Center) to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture for the entire federal government and for state, local and tribal government as appropriate and to ensure that critical disaster related information reaches government decision makers,” according to the document.

Situational awareness is described as any information gathered from a variety of sources that — when communicated to emergency managers and decision-makers — can form the basis for incident management and decision-making, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said. Under the national mandate, DHS monitors social media only for situational awareness purposes during times of crises, Chandler said, including terror attacks, natural disasters and other security risks.

“In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, DHS officials used the monitoring of social media sites to aid rescue efforts,” Chandler said. “In one instance, DHS employees were able to direct rescue crews to a person tweeting under a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince, saving his life.”

Social media networks give authorities another avenue to gather intelligence to help inform their actions, Chandler said.

“We know that social media has become a standard part of daily communication,” he said. “Millions of people around the world use tools and technology such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter every day, connecting with their peers more rapidly than ever before.”

In addition to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, the agency also monitors — among others — the following blogs, according to an update on the social media monitoring initiative dated Jan. 6, 2011:

>> blogdelnarco.com

>> BorderlandBeat.com

>> Wikileaks.com

>> globalterrorsearch.com

>> drudgereport.com

>> hurricanetrack.com

The documents list several keywords that monitors seek, including: “drug,” “cartel,” “gang,” “narcotics,” “Los Zetas,” “Cartel Del Golfo,” “Hurricane,” “Tornado,” “tremor,” “brush fire” and “help.”

“It sounds crazy, but Twitter is one of my top sources that I use to learn about certain events as soon as it happens,” said Sylvia Longmire, a narco-violence analyst and author of the upcoming book Cartel: The Upcoming Invasion of Mexico’s Drug Wars.

Through social media, Longmire can learn about certain developments in real time and then work to confirm them with authorities, government officials or media outlets.

In regards to the blogs listed by DHS, Longmire said that a virtual media blackout in many cities makes information published in places like blogdelnarco.com difficult to get elsewhere. Nevertheless, because that information comes from anonymous sources, it should be taken with a grain of salt and be verified before being taken as fact, she said.

“DHS is right to use this as part of a multilayer strategy,” she said. “I rely on Twitter to get started. It sort of plants a seed or a starting point to go from.”

When first told about the DHS monitoring program, Ramirez was a little unnerved that the government might be looking into individuals.

But Chandler said the agency monitors social media “for situational awareness purposes only, within the clearly defined parameters articulated in our Privacy Impact Assessment to ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers.”

In regards to social media, users should take into account that any information they post online is for the world to see, Longmire said.

“When you tweet something, assume that not only your followers are seeing this,” she said, “but also the government and the cartels, as well.”

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Ildefonso Ortiz covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4437.