Its's a RIOT: tracking online

[davidbfpo]

The Guardian's headline 'Software that tracks people on social media created by defence firm'. Exclusive: Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data like a 'Google for spies', drawing ire from civil rights groups.

Link to article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/software-tracks-social-media-defence nd the short four minute Raytheon video, from November 2010:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzRvCHP-Zk

What is RIOT?
Rapid Information Overlay Technology

Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon's:
Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation's rapidly changing security needs.

Just why The Guardian thinks this is an exclusive is beyond me. There is nothing new or startling here.

[davidbfpo]

The Guardian story has gone viral, thankfully leading to some good commentary and Jamie Bartlett, from Demos:
The first is that this is not really a story.....The idea that the police and intelligence agencies might be interested in the possible applications for their work – crime, trends, early warning, situational awareness – is hardly new or surprising.

Rightly he notes a debate is needed:
what this story does is raise an important point about how new technology makes surveillance far easier – and how the law needs to change in response. It is now far easier for the state to access personal information that we citizens happily put into the public domain.

Link:http://www.demos.co.uk/blog/googleforspiesishardlysurprising

Note I believe the focus of such technology is within the Western democracies, both for pre-emption and maybe for historical analysis. How much electronic data do the people of Mali generate? Plus is the data, beyond traffic analysis, actually in a language the user can understand?

[bourbon]

Yep, this story is seriously behind the curve. Absolutely nothing new or startling.

I don't know what has people in a tizzy - that a defense contractor is pitching it? I have doubts that government or defense contractors are the leaders in this type of technology or creepyness.