US agency running social network spying centre

Documents uncovered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) show that the US Department of Homeland Security is using social networking sites for spying.

The US government set up a social networking spying group to determine whether those applying for citizenship were legitimate, according to the EFF, and a 'Social Networking Monitoring Center' was set up to exploit this source of information.

"Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuel a need to have a large group of 'friends' link to their pages, and many of these people accept cyber friends that they don't even know," the government states in a memo seen by the EFF.

"This provides an excellent vantage point for the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."

Government employees are also encouraged to extend their social networks to catch people who may be trying to exploit citizenship laws, according to the EFF.

"The memo makes several assumptions about social networking users that are not necessarily grounded in truth, and reveal the author's lack of understanding of the ways people use social networking sites," said the EFF in a blog post.

"First the memo engages in armchair psychology by assuming that a large friend network indicates 'narcissistic tendencies'.

"Second, and perhaps more disturbing, the memo assumes that a user's online profile always accurately reflects their offline life."