Slashdot Mirror
The CIA's Social Mining Department
bsquizzato writes "The Associated Press is running a story about the CIA's Open Source Center: 'a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians,"' who work out of 'an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building' scouring social networks and other online media to keep up with the world's current events and opinions on American actions. This should come as no surprise, but it's quite interesting that President Obama is briefed daily on the latest hot topic tweets and Facebook posts."
but it's quite interesting that President Obama is briefed daily on the latest hot topic tweets and Facebook posts."
Isn't that what trending hashtags are for?
Not only interesting, but smart if he wants to get votes. Connecting with the public, and being able to converse on recent hot topics, or insert them into speeches, is a good way to get votes. It helps reduce the perception that he is disconnected from the people, which is an oft-heard complaint about those in Washington.
Love sees no species.
... latest Slashdot comments ?
What? By those standards the fact that the CIA probably has people reading newspapers implies that they work for them too. The CIA probably reads Iranian government press releases too. Going through public domain information to find useful intelligence is exactly what they're supposed to do.
Why does Obama even bother? Based on the petition responses, he doesn't really give a shit what any of us "little people" think, anyway.
I think he's just looking for buzz words to use as he blows more smoke up our collective asses, myself.
Neither party represents the people any more. It's time to call a mulligan on this one and start again...
So something like Three Days of the Condor but for facebook and twitter? Imagine browsing through millions of pictures of LOLcats day in, day out...
Vengeful Librarians? Unassuming brick building?
Let's hope Max Von Sydow doesn't show up at their door.
This is exactly what they do do. Most CIA analysts spend their time reading the newspapers and correlating discrete bits of information into a larger picture. It's only a tiny percentage who are doing what the popular imagination would consider "spy stuff." This is really no different than what they've been doing.
Please report to your nearest rendition centre for mandatory waterboarding and asshole penetration.
They don't need to own the companies to do their social engineering work...
They just hire third party companies to go online and astroturf the hell out of anything they get their hands on.
I naively thought domestic operations were expressly forbidden in CIA's (classified) charter.
One can only presume that there are more Right Wing tweeters than Left Wing or Centrist or tweeters, because ever since he took office he has been playing up to Right Wing sensibilities and corporate interests. Too bad that people like him would rather have a successful career than a moral conscience.
Sir, the internet recommends you do a barrel roll. Also it seems cats are demanding moar noms.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So I guess they have an astroturfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) department, as well. They spread positive stuff on America's actions in foreign social networks.
So I hope that the mining folks don't pick up something spread by their own astroturfing folks. Gee, wouldn't that be a major failure of intelligence gathering.?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
More likely, they know exactly who the astroturfers are, and exclude the astroturf from their tallies. If you want to know what's really going on, you have to exclude the spam.
They probably do keep an eye on which astroturfers are more effective at their jobs, though. (You might be very interested, however, in which spam campaigns actually catch on amongst a receptive sub-population.)
I thought they are all some kind of CIA shadow companies, and now we have the proof.
Why's this modded "Troll"? AT&T's been proved to leap onto its back and spread its legs for the NSA. This's no different. What surprise is there in knowing what DHS can do to Google whenever they want, regardless of what Sergei Brin might want.
"Do no evil", sure, but then the Feds show up with "a request."
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
They don't need to own the companies to do their social engineering work...
They just hire third party companies to go online and astroturf the hell out of anything they get their hands on.
Joseph Goebbels would be so proud.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You want to party? Climb up my trouser leg, and have a ball! You can have trouser trout for lunch, too!
How about instead of spying on the little guy, you go after the people that wrecked america, economically, socially, politically and intellectually.
Can you bring those crooks to justice please?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I don't get it; your last newsletter was much more lucid.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I loved that show. Spasibo, tovarisch!
Intelligence Analysis Team Lead
XXX seeks an Pattern/Trend (Life) Intelligence Analysis Team Lead to support the XXX at XXX A CURRENT TS/SCI CLEARANCE IS REQUIRED FOR EMPLOYMENT CONSIDERATION. CANDIDATES WITHOUT AN ACTIVE TS/SCI WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.
The selected individual will lead a team of analysts involved with Pattern of Life (POL) issues. Duties include: plan and develop internal analysis strategies and participate in project/team meetings to provide innovative methods and assistance in social network analysis and presentation of the findings in support of other team members' analysis. Additional duties include: assemble facts and information from a variety of data sources and work products made available by various Federal, state, regional, and tribal enforcement and intelligence agencies; locates, synthesizes, and interprets large amounts of textual, financial, and technical data such as transaction records, financial/accounting statements, money service business records, and general business data, plus intelligence information reports, finished intelligence products, filtered real-time data feeds, directed-searches results, and task-specific, specialized data sources.
The candidate shall possess the following skills: Experience characterizing HUMAN terrain using raster and vector GIS data layers; Experience using ArcGIS or other tools to perform address geocoding; Experience using spatial multi-criteria/multi-objective evaluation techniques in an ArcGIS to conduct area limitation analysis and/or mobility modeling; Experience applying crime mapping, geographic profiling, animal tracking, or manhunting methodologies, methods, and tools to predict where and when an individual is likely to be in a future time and place; Experience developing and applying descriptive and inferential statistics to flows over time and space, including application of time series analysis, sequential data analysis, spatial statistics, or space-time statistics; Experience developing and maintaining geo-databases bases on facility and event locations and times, and other behavioral, cultural, or social factors that influence an individual's spatial decision-making; Experience developing new Pattern of Life support products and analytic techniques; Experience training non-technical audiences in Pattern of Life methodologies, methods and tools; Ability to write scripts/applications in ArcGIS environment using Python or Visual Basic to automated commonly used tasks or loosely couple existing software; Familiarity with the Lund school of space-time geography or other contemporary theories of space-time geography or spatial decision-making; Experience using statistical or spatial statistical software to pattern of life analysis, including CrimeStat, Tableau, SPSS, Statistica, S-Plus, or SAS; Experience using Geotime, Starlight, Inspire, Centrifuge.
Essential Job Functions
Prepares intelligence documents through intelligence gathering using multiple intelligence sources such as human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), measurement and signal intelligence (MASINT), open source intelligence (OSINT) to support customers including military, intelligence, law enforcement or security agencies. Recommends process improvements or enhancements to processes.
Oversees the processing of information about situations and entities of strategic, operational or tactical importance; characterizes possible future actions and identifies possible courses of action or remedies.
Analyzes current intelligence holdings, identifies potential shortfalls, gaps and vulnerabilities to develop subsequent collection requirements. Develops specialized intelligence products, threat analyses, production support, and tailored intelligence products such as fusion intelligence, warning intelligence, estimative intelligence or psychological profiling. Develops and/or oversees the developme
Let's start tweeting! Please RT #Copyright20Years
Here's a pretty good explanation about how the subject line of this post is a true statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfY_HTzd_4U
You're right, their reading of public domain information off of facebook does not mean that they own facebook.
The fact that they dumped $12.7 million into facebook (when it was worth $500 thousand) does kind of mean they own it.
watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfY_HTzd_4U
The CIA had the creation of a relationship network database of Americans as a stated goal long before they wound up co-opting facebook for that purpose...
Just watch the video.
I was not aware that God was a random word generator.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Why is this a surprise? Given the prominence of social media and public online forums in a lot of the unrest over the last several years, I would be disappointed in the CIA if they were NOT examining this data. Like every other intelligence source, the social media data alone won't provide a complete picture, but combined with other data gathered from more traditional methods, it can provide a real-time indicator of what is going on in a particular part of the world.
I would politely point out that your statement implies that the rest of the world does not use social media ("after all, if they're mining social media, it must be domestic because foreign barbarians aren't as sophisticated as America in this regard"). Contrary to what you may have heard, the rest of the world does actively use it, and the CIA has too many headaches translating and spying on the rest of the world to worry about to be wasting time sorting through what America thinks about Kim Kardashian's divorce. The FBI on the other hand... :P
"And we would look elsewhere.." The previous three sentences were quite enough basis for some (many?) of us to realize that none of it is for our benefit. Monarchy, Communism, Theocracy, Democracy, and the rest are all designed for those that rule. Fortunately, Democracy's rule making process, up to recently, makes very hard to affect anything very positively or very negatively, really, so it gets my vote. And, no, I don't vote. The good news: Looking anywhere outside yourself for answers is waste of time. However, one can penetrate the illusion of all this silliness to find mental peace. It's just not easy. Good Luck.
Doesn't What's Hot [https://plus.google.com/hot] on G+ already do this. Good to see that the CIA is keeping up with whatever celebrity is marrying/divorcing/hooking up with whoever and pictures of cats doing funny things.
If you are reading this, and I know you probably are, then fuck you! Also, fuck the American government and the united states military. I don't support any of you jerks. That is all. Sincerely,
darjen
The Harrogate pod is certainly not amateurs!
Why is the CIA the one delivering this data? Shouldn't they be out finding and stopping terrorists?
I mean that seriously. They're not supposed to have any domestic activities. Since when is this appropriate?
What could possibly go wrong?
Secretary: Mr. President, here is today's status on Pakistan, status is medium, nothing new.
Mr. President: Thank you, hopefully negotiations will work out better this time.
Secretary: Here is the status on bailing out Greece, status is low, predictable trends.
Mr. President: Good, anything else?
Secretary: Justin Beaver appears to be a father.
Mr. President: What!?
This reminds me of a friend who posted an "open Letter" to the FBI/CIA, effectively saying "I know you are keeping tabs on most things Americans do and write, so if you could, I seem to have lost my copy of a letter I wrote last year. I'd be ever so grateful to get it back!"
CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs
assassinate 9/11 truth new world order president bilderberg g20 obama conspiracy osama taliban FEMA nuclear disaster dirty bomb terror washington sniper forced medication free speech fluoride illuminati uranium anthrax 737 pilot world trade center pentagon white house cuba taliban 747 nuclear bush buckling lizardmen marx anticapitalism enrichment mao black bloc third worldism presstv anarchism protests crash air force one heat seaking g8 echelon kill polonium 210 lenin pazuzu NAVSECGRUACT smallpox al-qaeda DPRK firearms
Why do you sound so surprised that a government peruses information freely provided by citizens? Especially since we've seen that many "movements" (e.g. Arab Spring) started on these sites. Makes perfect sense to me.
You need to check with the dictionary what government is, who is paying their salary, who they serve, and what their job actually is. I will help you: "The Government" is not some alien or a person, and regarding the "constitution", it's only purpose is border control and war.
but "On The Internet" means it can't be domestic (quick name the senators and representatives from "The Internet").
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Maryjane a gateway drug? Well, could be. I smoked weed for six months before ever smoking tobacco - during my first acid trip. Did plenty of the psycho-active, -delic stuff for ten years, '67-'77, picked it up, laid it down. Only stuff to cause any probs at all to date are nicotine, alcohol, caffeine.
And yeah, ingestion works great for boo (takes more but lasts longer and is mellower - mind the dosage); used to powder leaves and buds in blender or pestle and use as ingredient for sauces, dressings, whathaveyou, even Jello. Kept a shaker on the table - great with scrambled eggs, for example. Never tried it on ice cream.
As a few have noted, why was this given a troll -1?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird give a clear historical view of the CIA and its interest in shaping any emerging US press/media.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"