Secret documents expose US government's controversial 'risk score' system for social media profiles

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China may have a social credit system in the works, but the United States isn't far behind with a 'risk score' system being jointly developed by the federal government and a publicly funded university. 

Newly revealed records have brought to light the intricate relationship between national security and personal privacy. The documents disclose that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established a partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2018 to create a venture named "Night Fury." The initiative aimed to examine and evaluate social media profiles, assigning them "risk scores."

Documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice through a public records request have shed light on the collaboration between the DHS and UAB. The project, "Night Fury," was recently brought to public attention by news outlet Motherboard. The endeavor sought to harness the power of automation to identify and assess social media profiles with potential links to terrorism, illegal opioid distribution, and even disinformation campaigns.

The DHS document stated, “The Contractor shall develop these attributes to create a methodology for developing a ranking, or ‘Risk Score,’ associated with the identified accounts.”

According to a document from the DHS, the specified objective was for the contractor to devise a methodology that would enable the creation of a ranking system, commonly referred to as a "Risk Score," for the identified social media accounts.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Managing Director, Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Motherboard:

The use of automated processes to analyze social media to determine the likelihood that someone is ‘pro-terrorist’ and to assign a ‘risk score’ to individuals and groups online has echoes of a discredited Trump administration proposal called the Extreme Vetting Initiative, which would have monitored social media and the rest of the open internet to automatically flag people for deportation or visa denial based on whether they would be a ‘positively contributing member of society’ or ‘contribute to the national interests,’ as well as whether they ‘intend to commit’ a crime or act of terrorism.

The DHS document stated, “The Contractor shall develop these attributes to create a methodology for developing a ranking, or ‘Risk Score,’ associated with the identified accounts.”