CIA Invests In Firm That Datamines Social Networks

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It's part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using 'open source intelligence' — information that's publicly available... Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn't touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what's being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords. 'That's kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,' says company senior vice president Blake Cahill. Then Visible 'scores' each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. ('Trying to determine who really matters,' as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface."Apropos: Another anonymous reader points out an article making the point that users don't even realize how much private information they're sharing over these services.

Comments

Re:Can somebody tell me

[mayko]

What they really need is an "investment brain."

forget privacy, it's a waste of money

[Red Flayer]

Then Visible 'scores' each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. ('Trying to determine who really matters,' as Cahill puts it.)

Seems like a redundant effort. Why not just check the author's karma on slashdot?

Surely my high slashdot karma means I'm one of the most influential people on the internet... right? Right?

Re:forget privacy, it's a waste of money

[AJWM]

Surely my high slashdot karma means I'm one of the most influential people on the internet... right?

Well, it would, but your user number has too many digits.

Re:forget privacy, it's a waste of money

[bill_mcgonigle]

Well, it would, but your user number has too many digits.

Eh, you can't really blame him - some of us held out for a long time, thinking the Internet would always be anonymous. But then they made it so you didn't have to preview if you were logged in...

Re:Can somebody tell me

[Interoperable]

Just in case Visible Technologies crawls /. looking for it's own name: Fuck Off

I feel sorry for the crawler

[Interoperable]

The crawler is going to get seriously depressed if it crawls YouTube conversations.

Re:Can somebody tell me

[Thanshin]

Just in case Visible Technologies crawls /. looking for it's own name: Fuck Off

Salutations from a common SLASHDOT.ORG entity,

Do you mind if I ask you a question?

How influential are you among the other entities of SLASHDOT.ORG.

Thank you.

Re:Can somebody tell me

[sopssa]

Psst.. Visible Technologies, please do something about the Anonymous Coward bastard.. he's such a troll in every freaking thread.

Visible moderation

[zapakh]

+1 Influential

Re:!Anonymous.

[snspdaarf]

"The other day, upon the stair, I met a man, who wasn't there...."

Re:Data mine this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Attention FBI, I am staging a coup in about a year or so to take over the presidency.

sincerely, Sarah Palin.