Homeland Security Watching Facebook, Hulu, Dozens of Others

By Josh Long

What do Hulu, the Huffington Post, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WikiLeaks all have in common?

The websites and dozens of others are routinely monitored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Reuters has reported, citing a government document. The monitoring of such varied sites as an ABC News investigative blog, the Drudge Report, JihadWatch and WikiLeaks, is designed to help Homeland Security and other agencies manage responses to crises like security and border control in connection with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, the article said.

A government official familiar with the monitoring program told Reuters that the program was intended solely to enable officials to stay in touch with Internet-era media so they were aware of significant, developing events to which Homeland Security or its agencies might have to respond.

The article cited a “privacy compliance review” that Homeland Security issued last November; the document reportedly reveals that the agency’s national operations center has been monitoring the websites for at least roughly the last  1 ½ years.