Social Media Bust

So when is that new facebook friend not really a friend? When they’re a law enforcement agent using your online info against you. Whether checking an alibi against status updates or looking at photos for signs of suspicious activity, the FBI and police have turned social media sites into citizen monitoring tools à la Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought on by The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internal Justice Department document on the subject is now public, and “offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.”

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Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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