US Homeland Security is establishing guidelines on gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes, said Caryn Wagner, Undersecretary, Department of Homeland Security.

According to Wagner, the use of social media in the Arab Spring uprisings prompted this development so the US government can do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity.

“We’re still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source,” she said. “How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?”

Right now, the agency is developing protocols under strict laws meant to prevent spying on US citizens and protect privacy—including rules dictating the length of time the information can be stored and differences between domestic and international surveillance.