The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

A ‘privacy compliance review’ issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a ‘Social Networking/Media Capability’ which involves regular monitoring of ‘publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards.’

The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to ‘collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.’

The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A DHS official familiar with the monitoring program said that it was intended purely to enable command center officials to keep in touch with various Internet-era media so that they were aware of major, developing events to which the Department or its […]