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Federal government departments are using increasingly powerful cyber-snooping equipment to monitor the social media lives of millions of Australians.

A dramatic public confrontation between the Immigration Department and a Sydney political activist over her Facebook page has resulted in accusations that mass-electronic surveillance is being used to keep tabs on political dissent.

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Other large government departments including Centrelink, Defence and Social Services have done mass monitoring of social media activity.

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Centrelink's parent agency, the mammoth Department of Human Services, even has its own software, developed by the CSIRO and operated by a social media team of 10 public servants.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) hires private sector contractors who can monitor more than half-a-billion ''pieces'' of social media each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr and blogs.

Several commercially available social media-tracking platforms, some of them in routine use by public service online media teams, can easily track the web activities of protest groups and their individual members.

Immigration experimented several years ago with powerful software called Radian6, which can provide surveillance across a range of social web platforms, but decided not to adopt the application for in-house use.

The department's key research contractor said the monitoring undertaken for Immigration was about ''taking the temperature of society'' and that no reputable research company would help government departments compile ''hit lists'' of political opponents.

Original post:
Every move you make ... govt cyber snoops scouring the tweets