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."

Comments

As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[KermodeBear]

[...] it's quite interesting that President Obama is briefed daily on the latest hot topic tweets and Facebook posts."

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.

Re:As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you've just given an excellent description of the the difference between a politician and a leader.

Re:As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[Joce640k]

Not only interesting, but smart if he wants to get votes.

It's also the root of The Problem - politics has changed into a game of trying to please the unwashed masses while painting the opposition as black as possible.

The people running the country should be concerned about doing it efficiently while solving the big problems (economy, energy, healthcare, debt, etc). Being leaders who get stuff done, leading the world by example. As it is they're more concerned about expensive suits, manicures and looking good on TV.

The system is broken and we're the ones who're footing the bill.

Re:As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[rickb928]

"That's why more drastic action, like the protests and beyond, must be taken."

Well, if we paid attention at election time and actually examined the candidates, we would, sadly, conclude that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our votes.

Then we would pay more attention to the selection process, and would realize, sadly, that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our support.

Then, perhaps, we would pay more attention to the media, and realize, sadly, that none of it serves us. And we would look elsewhere for such meager scraps of information as can be useful in selecting our political leaders.

All of which is a waste of time, since the majority in the U.S. will never care who they vote for, so long as they can vote for the one that promises they will not have to pay taxes and will taken care of by their government, for others will pay the taxes.

Doomed. We are doomed.

Re:As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[cayenne8]

"Thag promise no regulate clubs, not like corrupt evil Ogg."

Yes, but his reign was sadly cut short by the Thagomizer ....

Re:As Much As I Don't Like Obama...

[rickb928]

Well, I can't speak for your father, but I can tell you how I feel about the 'tax the rich' ideas.

First, the premise that the rich aren't paying their fair share is difficult to support if you consider how much a share of tax revenue they already pay.

Second, when you see that 49-51% of all taxpayers aren't paying taxes at all, you might ask yourself 'why?'. Two possiblities:

1. These are the housholds that are so close or below the poverty line, that they ought to be excused from taxes.
2. Our representatives have, in their largesse, repeatedly made such changes to tax code that half their constituents pay no taxes, for various reasons. Some related to #1, some not.

If half our households are below the poverty line, I propose that we need to reconsider the 'poverty line' settings. Half is closer to normal than not.

And of course, our representatives aren't above buying votes.

I think also that the idea of 'taxing the rich' is essentially 'tax someone else'. This is most likely to lead to eventually running out of 'someone else' to tax. Not good.

This is not the time to shrink our government, even if we can, but it is also not the time to continue to tax as if there is no problem spending that revenue, be it on expenses or interest or debt amortization.

But there's never any good time to pay down your debt, except now. Make hard choices.

Then talk more about taxes.

ps - You'll be pissed off in a couple of decades or so when someone writes that 'perhaps in 20 years or so I'll be going senile too' in response to your ideas. Pure arrogance that your father's disagreement with you is senility, unless he is actually going senile, in which case you should be ashamed of yourself, and I pray for your father and your familyas they deal with this. And you.

Why?

[AngryDeuce]

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...

Re:Why?

[darkmeridian]

This isn't used for figuring out his politics. Twitter and all this other social media BS is used for arranging protests against various foreign governments, and also to advocate terrorism. The guy we whacked in Yemen was calling for jihad based in part on a series of Youtube videos. Keeping apprised of these developments can be very useful, especially if they're figuring out where these various posts are coming from. If there's a movement arising in Syria, for instance, the US and NATO can step in to provide the rebels aid.

Or maybe they're just using this to run for re-election. I really don't know.

Re:Why?

[MimeticLie]

They're all just justifications of the administration's existing policies. It's not a platform for interacting with the citizenry, it's a platform to lecture you about why the government is right.

Concern about software patents -> "That's the way the law works. Now we'll talk up our new patent law which doesn't address them."
Religion in the public square -> "The president mentioned you non-believers in his inaugural address, what more do you want?"
Legalize marijuana -> "The War on Drugs totally works guys, I swear."

The only two petitions that got a positive response were about DOMA and student loans, positions the administration had already taken.

Re:Why?

[cayenne8]

Which of the White House responses is it that you thought was out of line with the American public as a whole?

The ones about how pot was dangerous and should still be against the law, even for medical use.

I saw a story with a poll, on Fox news of all places the other day..where the poll indicated that today, the majority of people in the US were in favor of relaxing / repealing marijuana laws.

That one kinda surprised me....

Re:Why?

[pluther]

It's Fox News.

If Obama is against legalizing marijuana, then they're for it.

When President Bachmann gets into office, they'll be against it again.

We see you've been posting on slashdot, citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

Please report to your nearest rendition centre for mandatory waterboarding and asshole penetration.

Re:Three Days of the Condor?

[Hartree]

" Imagine browsing through millions of pictures of LOLcats"

I can has top seecretz?

Domestic operations?

[stevegee58]

I naively thought domestic operations were expressly forbidden in CIA's (classified) charter.

Re:Domestic operations?

[Beelzebud]

After 9/11 the bed wetters gave up their freedom for security, and took everyone along for the ride.

The CIA's astroturfing department

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.?

Re:The CIA's astroturfing department

[Shoten]

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.?

So, first off, before it was called "astroturfing" it was already an old practice in the realm of geopolitics...it was called "propoganda," and everyone does it like crazy. It's not rocket science that you guessed at that, by the way...this is far, far, far from being either a news or secret.

If you read the article, you'll see that what they're doing is not just absorbing the messages, but looking at the information in the context of the sources providing them. And they aren't just looking at opinions, but at facts as well. In fact, I'd be shocked if they weren't fully aware of what other efforts were underway to improve the viewpoint on American activities, and cross-referencing to validate the effectiveness of those efforts. As well they should; that's part of what an intelligence organization is supposed to do, after all. Why do some people get so upset when the CIA does what the CIA is meant to do? If you want to live in a country that has no such apparatus, your options are extremely limited...I recommend Costa Rica or Luxembourg. At least what we're talking about here is nothing more than listening to what the rest of the world is saying, and paying attention to it...this is not waterboarding, extraordinary rendition, or reaper drone strikes. It's reading Twitter and Facebook.

Re:The CIA's astroturfing department

[Plugh]

As an anarchist, elected official, and member of a vaguely anti-government group, I've often wondered how big the dossier is on me. Either it's large, in which case it documents a whole lot of perfectly legal stuff I'm doing and is just a waste of bureaucrats' time, or it's small or nonexistent, in which case the bureaucrats are fail for missing a guy who you'd think would be on the list.

Re:CIA=Facebook=Google

[CanHasDIY]

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.

I'll give them something to mine for

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

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?

Re:I'll give them something to mine for

[robot256]

How about instead of spying on the little guy, you go after the people that wrecked america, economically, socially, politically and intellectually.

They already spend too much time looking in the mirror, and you want them to do it more?

Re:I'll give them something to mine for

[L4t3r4lu5]

They funded the guy into office. He's not going to dick about them.

Modern Spy - An Actual Job Description

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:CIA=Facebook=Google

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why is this a surprise?

[Koreantoast]

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.

Re:CIA=Facebook=Google

[stanlyb]

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.