4 ms·

CIA following Twitter, Facebook

42 points by brd 15y ago

jgrahamc 15y ago
The most successful analysts, Naquin said, are something like the heroine of the crime novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," a quirky, irreverent computer hacker who "knows how to find stuff other people don't know exists." Who writes this stuff? Sure, Lisbeth Salander is a hacker, but 'quirky'? 'irreverent'? FFS If you'd read the books you'd know that she was a poor woman who'd been hideously abused. Or is that what the AP means by 'quirky'? Also, give that this is an article about 'open source' intelligence (open source as in public), how is Salander and her ability to find things people don't know exist even relevant? This is the modern equivalent of analysts getting copies of Pravda and reading them, only with a citizen-reporting element added in. Those with a masters' degree in library science and multiple languages, especially those who grew up speaking another language, "make a powerful open source officer," Naquin said. Yeah, just like Salander. (And, BTW, AP it's master's degree not masters' degree---you can check in the AP Manual if you like).
- Fliko 15y ago
  Naquin is just circle jerking. I very highly doubt they knew exactly what was going to happen in Egypt, and their ability to see the future is more of a hindsight bias than anything. I believe this will become more evident as more serious events go by in the US, and will be proven when the US doesn't act with a sort of sixth sense to these serious events.
  - noahc 15y ago
    Anyone can see that freedom fighters and protest organizers will use distributed technologies, because frankly they can't afford or manage a centralized technology. This has its trade offs, but it's easy, cheap, and fast. The only thing it is lacking is verifiability, and in many cases this is an asset not a detriment. When things are easy, cheap and fast you can crowd source verification so that if someone tweets out, "The rioters at $local_location have turned violent and are burning down the $city", everyone there can verify this and drown out the propaganda and rumors relatively quickly. So the first part of his statement isn't so much of a surprise. It's like saying, "The next political revolution will take advantage of electricity." It's very obvious. So really, what we are evaluating is can they predict unrest in Egypt reliably using Twitter and tweet content. I believe it's possible. Take for example, that calmness can predict the stock market[1]. Or pronouns can be used to predict any number of things[2]. Is it possible that the CIA can watch for shifts in calmness to anxiety or shifts in the number of pronouns used in reference to a particular leader and measure the likely hood of political uprising? That seams plausible to me. [1]http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ball/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ba... [2]http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/ http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/
    - Fliko 15y ago
      I agree that social media such as Twitter can be used to evaluate the general mood of locations, but it still won't allow an all seeing eye effect. Probabilities aren't absolutes. I felt like Naquin was circle jerking with what he was doing, the article gave the distinct feeling that Naquin thinks he can predict the events of the future, just not the when.
Anon84 15y ago
I have some problems about these numbers: In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day. These sound large until you realize that a relatively small project such as Truthy ( http://truthy.indiana.edu http://truthy.indiana.edu ) who deals only with ~10% of the full stream is already north of 20M tweets per day. If they got such a basic fact wrong, where else could they have messed up? Of course that doesn't mean that the government isn't interested in social media, or what they more broadly call OSI "Open Source Information/Indicators". Take a look at: http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitations_osi.html http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitations_osi.html
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  They are likely filtering on specific countries/languages that they are interested in, thus reducing the number of tweets they are working with.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  5 million sounds like the number that the analysts are following, not the total number of tweets made on Twitter each day.
shareme 15y ago
CIA following Twitter and FB to provide Obama with analysis is like asking an average person in China what love is..answer is never dependable..my apologies to our Chineese readers
MattLaroche 15y ago
If the CIA weren't doing something intelligent with the public stream of Twitter data and Facebook data, I'd be worried about their competence.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
tptacek 15y ago
I would be upset if they were not following Twitter and Facebook. When the story comes out that CIA has been given ongoing access to the page view data that ad networks collect, I'll be concerned. But the Twitter and Facebook firehoses are public. These are "open sources" (in the intelligence sense), and if anything, the real concern I have with intelligence agencies is that they waste tremendous amounts of time and money trying to duplicate those sources.
danso 15y ago
The issue for intelligence agencies has seemed less about being able to access and collect information, and more about how to filter the firehose.

42 points by brd 15y ago

The most successful analysts, Naquin said, are something like the heroine of the crime novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," a quirky, irreverent computer hacker who "knows how to find stuff other people don't know exists." Who writes this stuff? Sure, Lisbeth Salander is a hacker, but 'quirky'? 'irreverent'? FFS If you'd read the books you'd know that she was a poor woman who'd been hideously abused. Or is that what the AP means by 'quirky'? Also, give that this is an article about 'open source' intelligence (open source as in public), how is Salander and her ability to find things people don't know exist even relevant? This is the modern equivalent of analysts getting copies of Pravda and reading them, only with a citizen-reporting element added in. Those with a masters' degree in library science and multiple languages, especially those who grew up speaking another language, "make a powerful open source officer," Naquin said. Yeah, just like Salander. (And, BTW, AP it's master's degree not masters' degree---you can check in the AP Manual if you like).

Fliko 15y ago
Naquin is just circle jerking. I very highly doubt they knew exactly what was going to happen in Egypt, and their ability to see the future is more of a hindsight bias than anything. I believe this will become more evident as more serious events go by in the US, and will be proven when the US doesn't act with a sort of sixth sense to these serious events.
- noahc 15y ago
  Anyone can see that freedom fighters and protest organizers will use distributed technologies, because frankly they can't afford or manage a centralized technology. This has its trade offs, but it's easy, cheap, and fast. The only thing it is lacking is verifiability, and in many cases this is an asset not a detriment. When things are easy, cheap and fast you can crowd source verification so that if someone tweets out, "The rioters at $local_location have turned violent and are burning down the $city", everyone there can verify this and drown out the propaganda and rumors relatively quickly. So the first part of his statement isn't so much of a surprise. It's like saying, "The next political revolution will take advantage of electricity." It's very obvious. So really, what we are evaluating is can they predict unrest in Egypt reliably using Twitter and tweet content. I believe it's possible. Take for example, that calmness can predict the stock market[1]. Or pronouns can be used to predict any number of things[2]. Is it possible that the CIA can watch for shifts in calmness to anxiety or shifts in the number of pronouns used in reference to a particular leader and measure the likely hood of political uprising? That seams plausible to me. [1]http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ball/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ba... [2]http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/ http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/
  - Fliko 15y ago
    I agree that social media such as Twitter can be used to evaluate the general mood of locations, but it still won't allow an all seeing eye effect. Probabilities aren't absolutes. I felt like Naquin was circle jerking with what he was doing, the article gave the distinct feeling that Naquin thinks he can predict the events of the future, just not the when.

Anon84 15y ago

I have some problems about these numbers: In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day. These sound large until you realize that a relatively small project such as Truthy ( http://truthy.indiana.edu http://truthy.indiana.edu ) who deals only with ~10% of the full stream is already north of 20M tweets per day. If they got such a basic fact wrong, where else could they have messed up? Of course that doesn't mean that the government isn't interested in social media, or what they more broadly call OSI "Open Source Information/Indicators". Take a look at: http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitations_osi.html http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitations_osi.html

jgrahamc 15y ago
They are likely filtering on specific countries/languages that they are interested in, thus reducing the number of tweets they are working with.
brown9-2 15y ago
5 million sounds like the number that the analysts are following, not the total number of tweets made on Twitter each day.

shareme 15y ago

CIA following Twitter and FB to provide Obama with analysis is like asking an average person in China what love is..answer is never dependable..my apologies to our Chineese readers

MattLaroche 15y ago

If the CIA weren't doing something intelligent with the public stream of Twitter data and Facebook data, I'd be worried about their competence.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

tptacek 15y ago

I would be upset if they were not following Twitter and Facebook. When the story comes out that CIA has been given ongoing access to the page view data that ad networks collect, I'll be concerned. But the Twitter and Facebook firehoses are public. These are "open sources" (in the intelligence sense), and if anything, the real concern I have with intelligence agencies is that they waste tremendous amounts of time and money trying to duplicate those sources.

danso 15y ago

The issue for intelligence agencies has seemed less about being able to access and collect information, and more about how to filter the firehose.