Federal agencies may share information they collect from social media at all levels of government and the private sector, and sometimes even disclose data (for example, identifying people on travel and immigration forms) to foreign governments. In particular, information is shared domestically with state and local law enforcement, including through fusion centers, which are post-9/11 surveillance and intelligence services. A genetic center designed to facilitate coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement and private industry. This unfettered data sharing magnifies the risk of abuse.

Part of the risk stems from the dissemination of data to participants with a documented history of discrimination in ory monitoring, such as fusion centers. A 2012 bipartisan Senate investigation concluded that the fusion center "does little to benefit federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts" and instead generates a deluge of low-quality information while distributing Muslim Americans engaged in innocuous activities such as voter registration. People flagged as potential threats. Fusion Center has recently been caught spying on or monitoring racial and social justice organizers and protests, and promoting fake social media posts by right-wing provocateurs as credible intelligence about potential anti-police Violence in atrocity protests. Additionally, many police departments that obtain information from social media (or directly from federal agencies like the FBI and DHS) through fusion centers target and monitor minority communities and activists, but lack basic policies governing their use of social media. Finally, existing agreements allow the U.S. government to share social media data—such as data collected from U.S. visa applicants—with repressive foreign governments that have been known to retaliate against online critics.

The widespread dissemination of social media data amplifies some of the harms of social media surveillance or elimination of environmental and security protections. In some cases, government officials who initially review and gather information from social media may better understand—from witness interviews, field observation records, or other material obtained, for example, during an investigation—the meaning and relevance of compared to downstream receivers that lack this context. Any security measures the initiating agency puts in place for its monitoring or collection—use and retention limits, data security protocols, etc.—cannot guarantee that after it spreads in and eats what it collects. Once social media is spread, the source agency has little control over how this information is used, how long it is kept, whether it is likely to be misinterpreted or how it is used that may spur out of bounds.

Together, these dynamics amplify the harm to free expression and privacy that social media surveillance or produces. A valid and potentially unreliable assessment based on social media suggests that protests may turn violent or that specific individuals pose a threat, which could easily be justified as the examples above are used to police violent protests or arrests a method. Likewise, a person who has applied for a U.S. visa or has been investigated by a federal agency, even if they are cleared, is likely to be wary of what they say on social media for a long time to come if they know there is no end point to tiny censorship or disclosure of their online activities. Previously, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security I&A had a practice of redacting publicly available information on Americans for inclusion in open source intelligence reports distributed to partners because of "the risk of civil rights and liberty relations issues." This The practice is an obvious reason to remove the pre-public line of sight to identify such issues, which means that DHS recognizes that information identification can use someone as a target without a legitimate law enforcement reason.