Social media users seemed to
foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it.
Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.
The FBI has contracted for 5,000 licenses to use Babel X, a software made by Babel Street that lets users search social media sites within a geographic area and use other parameters.
The contract began March 30 and is worth as much as $27 million. The FBI has already
agreed to pay an IT vendor around $5 million for the first year of the contract, procurement records indicate. The contract has not previously been reported.
The Justice Department has previously had Babel X in its arsenal, contracting records show.
But the new contract appears to be by far the most the agency has ever shelled out for the software, and is one of the largest contracts for the software by a civilian agency, experts said.
- “It's both per-year the biggest I'm aware of in terms of obligation, and it's also the fact that it's a five-year contract,” said Jack Poulson, who runs the research advocacy group Tech Inquiry. “So if you combine those two things, it's the biggest Babel Street contract I'm aware of.”
And while it’s not clear what exactly the contract entails, contracting documents provide a blueprint for the FBI’s aspirations for the technology. Babel Street and IT vendor Panamerica Computers didn’t respond to requests for comment about the terms of the contract.
“The FBI uses social media tools to search publicly available information pertinent to predicated investigations in order to identify and respond to threats of violence, acts of terrorism, and potential federal violations within the scope of the FBI’s mission,” the FBI said in a statement after this story was first published.
Political fallout
Social media monitoring is still controversial on Capitol Hill, where the contract could be scrutinized by lawmakers in both parties. Some Democrats are anxious about creeping government surveillance, while Republicans have focused on the idea that the government could be monitoring political speech.
Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, told The Cybersecurity 202 that he’s calling for a briefing by the FBI on the issue.
- Jordan said he has “real concerns based on the [FBI’s] history and based on the fact that we don't know how they're using it and who they're going after," noting that he'd like FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to testify before the committee so he can get answers about the contract, NSO Group's Pegasus spyware and other issues.
The FBI's asks
The FBI awarded the contract for 5,000 Babel X licenses after telling contractors it wanted software to “gather information” from “Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Deep/Dark Web, VK and Telegram.”
- Also on the list: The FBI listed a slew of “preferable” — but not required — platforms, including 8Kun, Discord, Gab, Parler, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok and Weibo.
- Inclusion of conservative-preferred social media networks Gab and Parler on that list could also draw Republican attention on Capitol Hill.
In contracting documents, the FBI estimates that its 5,000 licensees will run around 20,000 keyword searches every month, though it cautioned that that’s “merely an estimate.” (For context, the FBI last year
got funding for around 36,000 employees — including around 13,000 special agents and 3,000 intelligence analysts.)
To all the agents watching this