Friending the wrong person might jeopardize your citizenship application

photo by webtreats

According to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the U.S. government is busily tracking social networks in a number of ways, including using sites like Facebook to monitor people who are applying for U.S. citizenship.

Social networking sites give the government an opportunity to reveal potential fraud by friending people who are applying for citizenship, then monitoring their activity to see if they are being deceptive about their relationships.

As the EFF points out, there are good reasons that law enforcement be able to use all the tools at their disposal to identify fraud and other illegal conduct. But the memo doesn't indicate that immigration officials should have any other indications about suspicious behavior before conducting social networking surveillance. full story