Facebook is more cooperative than Twitter Inc. in handing over private user data to the authorities; and that Friend you just added may well be a federal investigator acting undercover.
Those are just a couple of the juicy tidbits the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has secured. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the EFF issued a request to six federal agencies to retrieve documents detailing how they're using the Internet for investigations. When none of the agencies complied, EFF launched a lawsuit.
As a result, EFF has received documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Justice Criminal Division, both of which provide information on how officials should and should not be using the Internet for surveillance purposes.
A 38-page training course from 2009, released from the IRS, for example, provides a breakdown of how to use the "Advanced Search" tool on Google to locate taxpayer info, as well as an overview of how to use Google Street View...
