FBI and Facebook Potentially at Odds Over Social-Media Monitoring

An effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to more aggressively monitor social media for possible threats could clash with Facebook's privacy policies and possibly its attempts to comply with a record $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The FBI is soliciting proposals from outside vendors for a contract to pull vast quantities of data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The request was posted in July 2019, weeks before a series of mass murders shook the country and led President Donald Trump to call for social-media platforms to do more to detect potential shooters before they act. The deadline for bids is Aug. 27. As described in the solicitation, it appears that the service would violate Facebook’s ban against the use of its data for surveillance purposes, according to the company’s user agreements and people familiar with how it seeks to enforce them.