Big Brother is watching Facebook and Twitter

[xchrom]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428696.800-big-brother-is-watching-facebook-and-twitter.html

SATIRICAL newspaper The Onion recently described Facebook as a project of the Central Intelligence Agency. "After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded," a fictional agency deputy director told Congress. He was happy that Facebook users voluntarily post "alphabetized lists of all their friends" and "even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment". It is, he concluded, "truly a dream come true for the CIA".

The scenario is not that far from the truth. Facebook has close to a billion users, many of whom post daily updates on their thoughts and feelings. The same thing happens on Twitter. Foursquare users share information about their location. Commentators on news sites express opinions and outrage. And, as a New Scientist review of procurement requests shows, the US government is keen to take advantage of what amounts to a society of self-surveillance.

In a way, they are behind the curve - marketing firms already monitor social networks to gauge public reaction to product launches. And online chatter can be analysed to forecast election results, for example. US federal agencies want to harness these techniques in an attempt to gauge overseas opinion about America, or even get hints on how to head off terrorist activity.

With these aims in mind, officials at the Department of State issued a procurement notice on 1 June asking software developers to submit bids for a contract to supply tools that provide "deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web". These tools will analyse conversations taking place in at least seven foreign languages, including Chinese and Arabic.

[Warren DeMontague]

1. No doubt they'll ONLY be looking for terrorist statements like "I smoked some great pot last night"

gotta git teh terrorists!

[daaron]

2. Cue Facebook defenders.