DHS Sought to Assign ‘Risk Scores’ to Social Media Users, Documents Show

The Facebook logo is seen on a cell phone, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. The Canadian Press/AP, Michael Dwyer

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought to assign “risk scores” to social media users as part of an initiative dubbed “Night Fury,” documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show.

Night Fury sought to develop a methodology for combing through social media posts and content to identify potential criminal or terrorist activity.

According to a complaint made to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the data collected under the program included social media posts, photos, and videos.

The OIG ruled that sufficient safeguards had not been put in place on the program to respect the privacy of American citizens.

In 2018, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) reached out to the University of Alabama at Birmingham about the project, which was purportedly designed to “develop automated processes to identify potential pro-terrorist social media accounts and open Facebook groups where pro-terrorist accounts interact,” documents show (pdf).

Homeland Security also considered using the program to combat opioid and human trafficking.

“The contractor shall conduct R&D on leveraging open source and social media to counter terrorists’ use of the internet and other DHS use cases (e.g., human trafficking, transnational criminal networks),” the contract read in a section on its intended scope.

The University of Alabama was tasked with “identify[ing] relevant attributes” in order to “create a methodology for developing a ranking, or ‘Risk Score,’ associated with the identified accounts.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington on March 28, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Identify Pro-Terrorist Thought

The information collected was largely collected via algorithms and emphasized activity on Facebook and Twitter.

The algorithms were intended to detect “terrorist propaganda” and “identify key influencers of pro-terrorist thought.”

DHS’s contract with the University of Alabama cost taxpayers nearly $790,000.

In March 2022, the OIG published a report that mentioned Night Fury after being advised of potential privacy violations (pdf), ruling that DHS S&T had failed to maintain proper oversight of research projects with contractors, including in the case of the Night Fury initiative.

“The complainant stated the project began in September 2018 and specifically included data collection of millions of social media records, including posts, videos, and photos,” the OIG report says of Night Fury.

“Also, the complainant notified OIG of concerns that S&T may not have ensured effective programmatic oversight, employee accountability, Federal records management, contract documentation, and information security for this specific project.”

That report found that there were “privacy safeguards that should have been in place” but were not.

Following the publication of the OIG report, the Brennan Center non-profit submitted a FOIA request that ultimately led to the discovery of DHS’s contract with the University of Alabama.

After an extension of the project in 2019, it was finally shuttered in 2020.

Weaponization Concerns

The discovery of the Night Fury initiative comes amid continuing concerns about the ways that federal law enforcement agencies have allegedly abused their authority.

DHS itself came under fire in April 2022 for its formation of a “Disinformation Governance Board,” a DHS panel allegedly designed to combat misinformation. The creation of the panel led to a series of comparisons to George Orwell’s “1984” among critics and was ultimately dissolved a few months later after a backlash.

But the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI have also faced allegations of misusing their authority.

A report released in 2021 found that the FBI had used one of its surveillance authorities—Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—to data harvest more than 3.3 million Americans without a warrant, including a member of Congress.

Since then, the FBI has reportedly reduced FISA violations by 90 percent. But this still leaves hundreds of thousands of illegal queries against American citizens.

The FBI recently reiterated its promise to stop this data harvesting, but the series of violations and reported abuses of the tool have contributed to dwindling trust of federal law enforcement among both Republican voters and Republican lawmakers.

‘Serious Abuses’ of Authority

A recent whistleblower report claimed that the FBI had become “enveloped in politicization,” and had engaged in “serious abuses” of its authority.

For instance, the report claimed that the FBI had focused attention on traditionalist and Latin Mass Catholic communities, dubbing them “radical-traditionalist Catholics.”

These communities were allegedly pegged as a hotbed of “white supremacist” activity and a potential terror threat, and the FBI expressed the intention to place informants in these parishes.

Republicans have also pointed to an Oct. 4, 2021, memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland that directed the FBI to partner with local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to identify parental threats at school board meetings against faculty and “prosecute them when appropriate.”

The memo came after many students across the country began learning remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving parents a window into their children’s education.

Several discovered that controversial, disputed ideas about sexuality, gender, and race were being taught as fact, leading to a spurt of parents showing up at school board meetings to protest the content.

The FBI responded to the memo by allegedly placing “threat tags,” indicating the possibility of a terror or violent crime incident, on parents who attended school board meetings, leading to concerns that the FBI was cracking down on First Amendment-protected speech.

The DOJ didn’t return a request for comment on the issue.