CIA Invests In Firm That Datamines Social Networks

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @02:52AM from the problem-with-limited-privatization dept.

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.

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forget privacy, it's a waste of money by Red+Flayer · 2009-10-20 03:05 · Score: 5, Funny

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?

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"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
1. Re:forget privacy, it's a waste of money by AJWM · 2009-10-20 03:30 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  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.
  
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  -- Alastair
Re:Can somebody tell me by Interoperable · 2009-10-20 03:20 · Score: 4, Funny

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

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So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Re:Can somebody tell me by sopssa · 2009-10-20 04:10 · Score: 4, Funny

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