The government monitoring what political protestors put up on Facebook and Twitter

This is pretty scary. Why would the government be looking at Facebook to monitor "political protesters"? One also wonders what percentage of the Facebook pages reveal information about tax delinquents.

The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and

political protesters

. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.

In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations. . . . .