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

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!

[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:"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: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: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.

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!