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Federal Reserve Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed

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John James Posted: Tue, Sep 27 2011 3:00 PM

The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify 'Key Bloggers' and Monitor Billions of Conversations About the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, Forums and Blogs

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The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution". In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any "positive" feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.

You can read this "Request for Proposal" right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes....

[continued...]

 

check out this parody ad for the new "attack watch" website:

 

 

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Wheylous replied on Tue, Sep 27 2011 4:08 PM

Watch out for magma: it's liquid... but it's rock!!

XD

 

But yeah, the policy sucks. I think they may use this to spin their speeches better. Hopefully not to blacklist people.

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Clayton replied on Tue, Sep 27 2011 5:58 PM

They already do. Behold the signals-intelligence headquarters of the Federal Reserve at Ft. Meade, Maryland:

Clayton -

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James replied on Wed, Sep 28 2011 3:08 AM

That image link doesn't work.  Maybe the system is already up and running. :/ 

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
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Actions of the paranoid or someone who wants to prepare for criticism.

You can actually do this without all that much trouble.  No one should suspect anything posted on the internet is private.

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John James replied on Wed, Sep 28 2011 12:22 PM

you can always count on the judge...

 

 

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DanielMuff replied on Fri, Sep 30 2011 12:38 AM

The question that immediately came to my mind when I first heard of this was: They were'nt doing this already?

To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process.
Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!"
Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."

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John James replied on Fri, Sep 30 2011 12:32 PM

They've been around for a 100 years and never felt the need to hold a press conference until April of this year.

 

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I, for one, am not intimidated by any of this.

The keyboard is mightier than the gun.

Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.

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Autolykos:
I, for one, am not intimidated by any of this.

Change your display name to your real name and post your social security number in your profile then.

 

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My point was that my internet posting behavior is not going to change in the slightest because of this. Surely you know that already.

The keyboard is mightier than the gun.

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Clayton replied on Mon, Oct 3 2011 5:37 PM

@Auto: I think in light of recent developments (Awlaki assassination, etc.), there is no further doubt left that the US government absolutely intends to chill free speech on all levels. We're quickly heading toward a situation where the smart people are going to get the hint and STFU while the stupid people who keep yakking end up getting hit with any of a million bullshit legal charges. The front lines of the assault was the corporate media, next are the smaller news orgs and independent journalists and preachers. Next in line will be online expressions of opinion through blogs and forums such as this. They haven't got that far yet but it's coming, mark my words. You can't even get news online anymore. BBC used to have some wider-perspective stuff but now it's just another outlet of "war on terror" bullshit. The meta-news search engines just return the same propaganda you'd get off the front of the NYT. Even a year ago, I could to go to Google News and click "World" and get a decent smattering of worldwide news not of US concern. Not today. Every single goddamn English-language news article on the net almost without exception is either about the US or something the US is doing to some other country. Predator drones. Assassinations. NAFTA. EU. ECB. UN. On and on. Even al-Jazeera - which used to be a good source of adversarial news perspective - has been taken over. Russia Today is one of the least-bad news sources still existing online but it's only an accidental by-product of its being "anti-US" rather than "pro-news." There has been a sharp, marked change in the quality of online news available in the English language over the course of the last year or so. I literally feel like I'm living in a complete news vacuum.

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