(Reclaim The Net) The Oversight Project, run by conservative think tank Heritage, has sued the Biden administration over surveillance of people through social media.
The lawsuit demands the release of documents related to the DHS’ contract with Babel Street, a Virginia-based company that provides surveillance and data mining technologies.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
The DHS has a contract with Babel Street to provide Babel X, a tool that scrapes data from smartphone apps and online sources. According to a report on Heritage’s website, government agencies “can aggregate and search that data by any number of keywords and in many languages.”
Speaking to The Washington Post in 2017, the company’s founder Jeff Chapman said: “There are billions of smartphones on the planet. All you have to do is listen to them.”
“The Department of Homeland Security, county governments, law enforcement agencies and the FBI use it,” The Washington Post’s report said. “The Pentagon was Babel Street’s first customer. Agencies focused on counterterrorism would use the company’s technology to monitor terrorists’ online chatter to predict attacks. Police departments and the FBI soon started signing up for the service, public contract documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.”
