CIA buying software to monitor social network posts
Posted by Jacque on October 22nd, 2009
Report from Wired: “In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”
The idea for use of Visible Technologies is to keep track of foreign social media, and “give spooks early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally”, but of course the tool can and is being used internally by companies tracking the “buzz” (e.g., bloggers, tweeters) about their products or companies.
“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists. But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations. Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”
Read more at Wired. Adapted image by Crys. Creative Commons license.
