The Department of Justice and five other governmental agencies were sued last week by a privacy watchdog group for using Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to investigate citizens in criminal and other matters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to know exactly how the feds are using social networking to gather information in investigations.

The suit comes as Congress is considering legislation to increase protections for consumers who use social networking sites. So far, the government is staying mum how it is leveraging these new tools in investigations and what it is collecting from the Internet.

In addition to the Justice Department, the suit names other agencies, including: the Department of Defense, DHS, the CIA, the Department of Treasury and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"Although the Federal Government clearly uses social networking websites to collect information, often for laudable reasons, it has not clarified the scope of its use of social-networking websites or disclosed what restrictions and oversight is in place to prevent abuse," the lawsuit said.

Law enforcement usually needs a warrant to collect information, but it's unclear where social networks stand in terms of the right to protect information that is publicly available for everyone to see.

For more on this lawsuit:
- see this eWeek.com article

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