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

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:Three Days of the Condor?

[Hartree]

" Imagine browsing through millions of pictures of LOLcats"

I can has top seecretz?

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.

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?

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: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: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.