US Intelligence Mining Your Social Network Data

bs0d3 writes "U.S. Intelligence has hired social scientists to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones. They intend to use this info to track sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability. Privacy advocates are deeply skeptical of the project, saying it reminds them of Total Information Awareness, a 9/11 Pentagon program that proposed hunting for potential attackers by identifying patterns in vast collections of public and private data: telephone calling records, e-mail, travel data, visa and passport information, and credit card transactions. In a recent budget proposal, the defense agency argues that its analysis can expose terrorist cells and other groups by tracking their meetings, rehearsals and sharing of material and money transfers."

Comments

I know that's what they're doing...

[SwedishChef]

So I purposely write posts knowing that they're doing it and designed to further any agenda *I* might have.

Occupy Wall Street everywhere in America!! :D

Re:I know that's what they're doing...

[ackthpt]

So I purposely write posts knowing that they're doing it and designed to further any agenda *I* might have.

Occupy Wall Street everywhere in America!! :D

Write a circular agenda (that being one which dependencies on sub-agendas, which continue in a never ending circle, or even a moebius loop!) and see if you can cause a stack overflow and the biggest core dump in history. :D

Re:I know that's what they're doing...

[Nutria]

that's how you kill a know-it-all computer....

Unless it has paradox-absorbing crumple zones.

Re:I know that's what they're doing...

[Tsingi]

Occupy Wall Street everywhere in America!! :D

Really. They could save themselves a lot of money by just looking out the window.

Let 'em

[ackthpt]

He who mines my social network date mines garbage.

except my slashdot journals, which are pure gold as to the utter stinker I am

Shocking!

[GameboyRMH]

I am shocked, SHOCKED that this is happening! Who would have thought that the same people behind CARNIVORE and ECHELON would make such dastardly use of the vast quantities of publicly available information!

Re:Shocking!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I naively thought that John "Iran-Contra" Poindexter was just going to fade away after his too-creepy-even-for-congress TIA project was cancelled...

Re:Shocking!

[geekoid]

Wow, just wow. YOu have fallen for the 'everything is "Obama's fault, especially stuff that isn't" hook line and sinker

Almost everything he does, even stuff the republicans wanted, is castrated by the republicans the pubs are holding up the government, and everyone blames Obama.
This mess was not creted by him, and is not continuying becasue of him. IN fact, the little he ahs managed to get passed the pub wall has helped.

Look at hoistoric trends of unemployment. Notice that in contrast to all increase in unemployment, This round it capped and leveled instead of peaked at a hirer value. It was cut short. This also jives with similar situation in other countries.

But, no. That gets buried and ignored.

The fact that it is known what do do to best help the economy. Seen historically and in other countries, doesn't happen isn't because of Obama, it's because the pubs are just a bunch of Zealots trying to get a radical religious extremist to be president.

But idiots like you keep repeating what the heard like a stupid boring little parrot. You don't look at data, you don't read world economists. You are a clueless sap trained to think everything is wrong.
Hey, the pubs got us into this mess, thwarted every opportunity to fix it, so lets put them back in office.

I am NOT Obama's biggest fan. What he is trying to do is the right thing, and any failure regarding the economy or wall street lies squarely on the pubs shoulders.

I wish I could be ignorant and wrap myself in a warm blanket of stupid like you.

Re:Shocking!

[DarkOx]

Wow, just wow. YOu have fallen for the 'everything is "Obama's fault, especially stuff that isn't" hook line and sinker

Obama is the chief and as a very famous former chief said, the buck stops here, Its not his fault but he has done very little to change things.

Almost everything he does, even stuff the republicans wanted, is castrated by the republicans the pubs are holding up the government, and everyone blames Obama.

Who is falling for political myths here? I mean its not like his party did not have a majority in BOTH houses of Congress for the better part of his presidency to date. He has also made plenty of executive moves that the Republicans have had not ability to block. He did a troop surge, he has not closed the secret interrogation centers, has had HIS justice department argue in support of all kinds of surveillance measures, and plenty more.

Look at historic trends of unemployment. Notice that in contrast to all increase in unemployment, This round it capped and leveled instead of peaked at a hirer value. It was cut short. This also jives with similar situation in other countries.

That one is tough to argue either way. Its not as if there is really very much data, handfuls of historical events, that hardly amount to a pattern, and non of these policies has ever been tried with any type of control group, so real scientists would say we don't know. Partisans and economists looking to get published would say different.

The fact that it is known what do do to best help the economy. Seen historically and in other countries, doesn't happen isn't because of Obama, it's because the pubs are just a bunch of Zealots trying to get a radical religious extremist to be president.

That would make all kinds of sense except that the Tea Party, currently a major part of the GOP support is NOT largely made up of social conservatives just fiscal. The current lead candidate in the GOP primary race is a Mormon, not even recognized as a Christian by the traditional Moral Majority Zelots.

I am NOT Obama's biggest fan. What he is trying to do is the right thing, and any failure regarding the economy or wall street lies squarely on the pubs shoulders.

Right...Because non of economic problems can be traced to policy decisions made by people like Barny Frank or Chris Dodd, and Bill Clinton, with is lunatic FED appointee Greenspan.

Sorry pal it looks like you are just as delusional as anyone who may be found supporting the other side of aisle.

In all seriousness

[roundscimitar]

Some people are aware of this and are genuinely concerned. I'm probably going to get down-modded for this but as a concerned programmer, I made a website called truefriender specifically for this reason. I just have no idea how to tell everyone about it without sounding like a spam-bot. It is worthwhile to check out if you're concerned.

Re:"News"

[spire3661]

I think what you mean if its on the WORLD WIDE WEB, by definition it isnt private. The internet encompasses a vast amount of wholly private spaces.

Bomb

[vvaduva]

So now I am not allowed to say "bomb" online? Bomb bomb bomb...bomb bomb bomb bomb!!

Re:Bomb

[geekoid]

Says who? WTF do you even base the comment on? Yes there scanning the data looking for sociological trends, not looking for the word bomb.

Idiot.

Re:LOL

[powerchord84]

It's the government...they don't do anything efficiently, least of spend money. They hired people to research the technology, give reports, implement, and now they probably pay a bunch of people to actually sit around and gather the data and analyze it (after a computer does, of course). I'm sure I've left a lot of steps out, but you can bet your ass they spent a TON of money on it. I agree with you in theory, but let's get real: we're talking about the government here, not a rational, intelligent entity.

Not shocked, too busy laughing.

[geekmux]

I'm too busy laughing hysterically at the very aspect that anyone thought this was "new" news in any way. What exactly do you think our intelligence agencies have been doing for a very long time now. I find it rather pathetic they had to hire "social scientists" to do this though...you would think they've had enough practice at data mining by now.

OK, now I'm laughing at the concept of a few million being handed to this group of "social scientists" who are busy right now watching YouTube videos on how to extract information from Facebook accounts...Oh, look! I think one of them just found the UK privacy law "loophole"...shortcut!

Re:That's subversive!

[compro01]

Typical US Government. They were supposed to order shirts, not coats.

Don't be too paranoid...

[Bitmanhome]

Everyone is mining your social network data.

Us v. Them

[Onymous Coward]

Who is the "Us" and who is the "Them"?

We get handed a box with two choices. Liberals or conservatives. Most of us choose a side and fight vehemently. We get all worked up. We call the other side evil and stupid.

But maybe we should question the box we're handed? Think beyond it?

I was doing this in the 90s on IRC.

[BitZtream]

Seriously, when you speak and do things in public, people are going to analyze you.

A friend of mine wrote an IRC bot to monitor channels and then derive information from it.

Later, I rewrote it with lessons learned included from the previous version.

By the time it was done, pretty much no one was capable of fooling the bot regardless of how you tried, it could identify any user any the channel based on about 20 to 30 sentences minimum of conversation with them, regardless of how they tried to fake their identity, (nick/host/server changes meant essentially nothing to the bot, and it was trained fairly well on detecting based on conversation after we got around 10 million lines of conversation or so recorded.

It was SIMPLE by any standard, and it was fun as shit to see new ways to pick out patterns in conversations, made it easy to find sleeper agents as well (bots or relays to others used for nefarious purposes). Sometimes lurking gives more information than talking ;)

Anyway, this isn't new, its just on a larger scale due to being able to computerize the process. People, ALL PEOPLE, do this very thing naturally all the time subconsciously, like it or not. We've evolved to constantly analyze events in our lives, especially people. Slashdot's Friend/Foe system? Same thing, except you give it direct feedback.

If you don't like people knowing something, don't tell them about, which you know, is kind of THE FUCKING POINT BEHIND SOCIAL NETWORKING. The whole damn concept behind these sites, and THEY TELL YOU WHEN YOU SIGN UP is to associate yourself and your actions with others like you and your associates. How do you think Facebook, MySpace and Google+ come up with 'new friends' ... ITS THE SAME DAMN THING.

The POINT of social networking is so that YOU and OTHERS can do this sort of thing SPECIFICALLY.

Quick, everyone join Furries for Technology!

[bryan1945]

Let's see the gov try and figure that one out.

Re:LOL

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Actually efficiency is short term thinking. That is why we have research done and supported by the government because with all the MBA's out there no science or technology will get done because they want to make a profit this quarter and every quarter, and they will fire 10,000 scientists and researchers to make their numbers. So efficiency is not the grand god nor always the wisest philosophy.

But I think this work is scary and should be stopped on grounds that in a free society, freedom comes a the price of not only vigilance but also anonymity and privacy.

Social science?

[Wowsers]

U.S. Intelligence has hired social scientists to mine the vast resources of the Internet

Just a point, stop calling them "social scientists", they are not scientists, and it degrades the value of hard science of myself and others here that went to university for.

Nothing new

[E.I.A]

You might consider InQtel http://www.iqt.org/ and Visible Technologies http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/exclusive-us-spies-buy-stake-in-twitter-blog-monitoring-firm/, both which fit this article's description, and have had tons of CIA seed money put into them. We know the pentagon has a sock-puppet program, and whatever law prevent them from operating in the US can be bypassed through private contractors hence (perhaps) Fusion Centers. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fusion_center Both the FBI and DHS are quite busy here too. I frequently observe FBI, .mil, dhs.gov, DoD, and other government IPs visiting my website and subscribing to comments. Do a whois on my latest visitor: 153.31.113.26 ~~ And yeah, go right ahead and mod this as "troll" too. Bloody snobs!