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Pentagon Wants To Predict Anti-Trump Protests Using Social Media Surveillance (vice.com)

Alice Marshall shares an excerpt from Motherboard: The United States government is accelerating efforts to monitor social media to preempt major anti-government protests in the U.S., according to scientific research, official government documents, and patent filings reviewed by Motherboard. The social media posts of American citizens who don't like President Donald Trump are the focus of the latest U.S. military-funded research. The research, funded by the U.S. Army and co-authored by a researcher based at the West Point Military Academy, is part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to consolidate the U.S. military's role and influence on domestic intelligence.

The vast scale of this effort is reflected in a number of government social media surveillance patents granted this year, which relate to a spy program that the Trump administration outsourced to a private company last year. Experts interviewed by Motherboard say that the Pentagon's new technology research may have played a role in amendments this April to the Joint Chiefs of Staff homeland defense doctrine, which widen the Pentagon's role in providing intelligence for domestic "emergencies," including an "insurrection."

2 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I was not aware protestors made their efforts secret. I am personally all for secret protests! It would really help avoid the convuluted traffic the public protests inspire.

  2. Re:Obamacare didn't make your healthcare go to shi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Every country in the world that's implemented it has made it work ...because they had to, because communists made them.