The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking a subscription service that will help it monitor for potential threats on social media service while maintaining privacy rights, according to an amended request for proposal (RFP) published July 30.
Proposed subscriptions should give the FBI access to tools that would enable the bureau to legally collect and acquire data from social media platforms that will be stored, vetted, and formatted by a vendor.
The RFP states that terrorist groups, foreign intelligence services, and other threat-actors use social media to further their activity, and said that the right monitoring tool would help the FBI find potential threats to U.S. national security.
“With increased use of social media platforms by subjects of current FBI investigations and individuals that pose a threat to the United States, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other Social media platforms in a timely fashion,” the RFP said.
Although the FBI initially released the RFP on July 8, the bureau amended it on July 30 to extend the proposal deadline from Aug. 8 to Aug. 27.