In a move sure to get knees jerking all over the Web, the investment arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has taken an ownership share in Visible Technologies, a private firm that specializes in the monitoring of social media.
While it's worth getting steamed that Big Brother is riffling through your Flickr pics and reading your TripAdvisor posts, the details of this deal raise a lot more questions beyond the basic "civil liberties vs. national security" debate.
In-Q-Tel , a federal entity that invests on behalf of the CIA and the intelligence community, put an undisclosed amount of cash into Visible, which crawls more than half a million public social sites per day, from lightly trafficked blogs up to mega sites like Amazon, Twitter, and YouTube. It provides real-time analytics and keyword searches for its customers, including customized influence- and relationship-mapping.
The reasons why the CIA might take an interest in social media conversations are pretty obvious. Al-Qaeda has a blog. The Taliban launched a YouTube channel. The Secret Service reports that domestic death threats against the president are up 400 percent since Obama took office in January.
The smartest bad guys know how to keep a low profile, but plenty of crazies are letting their freak flags fly online, and it's not a bad thing that intelligence agencies are paying attention in a systematic way. Who knows what clues might be waiting to be mined from people's NetFlix queues and Amazon reviews?
Reportedly, Visible does not crawl private networks like Facebook. Everything swept up in this net is public already. While the analytics angle may raise some eyebrows, keeping track of conversations on public networks is not fundamentally different from reading foreign newspapers and recording global media broadcasts, which the CIA has done as part of its basic intelligence gathering since the 1940s.
One complicating factor is the rise of Twitter as a tool for dissidents and political activists -- both overseas (as in Iran last summer) and closer to home (some of the protests at the G8 Summit in Pittsburgh were coordinated through Twitter). Tools like Twitter get their power from being public, and CIA involvement raises the possibility of mischief ranging from provocation and tampering to the targeting of "trouble makers" to attempts to chill free speech.
But that ship has sailed. If anyone thinks the CIA -- and every other intelligence agency on Earth -- isn't already neck-deep in social media counterintelligence and disinformation, I have a used tinfoil hat to sell you.
No, the biggest questions here are on the business side, not the policy side. Why is the CIA, through In-Q-Tel, taking ownership in a private company rather than just contracting with the firm as a customer for its services? Given the emerging technical standards and speed of innovation in the area of analytics, why place a big bet on one firm rather than spread the risk around by engaging with multiple firms with multiple methods for slicing and dicing the data?
Of course, we don't know that In-Q-Tel is not also doing that, but it could be that there is something unique to Visible -- its approach? Its technology? Its personnel? Does U.S. intelligence need to bring Visible inside the tent to integrate its analytics engine with systems whose reach and scope are not so straightforward?
And if so, why make this public? Generally speaking, when the CIA wants to keep something like this a secret, it stays secret. A public transaction through a known CIA investment proxy is just asking for media coverage. And to what end? The way you catch bad guys dumb enough to discuss their plans on public networks is to let them think they are being clever and inconspicuous. Big headlines saying "The CIA buys social analytics firm!" seems like an invitation for folks to take their conversations underground.
In short, it's tough to fathom how the intelligence establishment could be savvy enough to recognize they should be keeping tabs on the social Web, but then leave this many threads dangling.
The play for Visible is certainly neither the CIA's first nor its only foray into Web 2.0 analytics, but for whatever reason, it has become part of the public discourse. Yes, the civil liberties angles are troubling, but I have the feeling it's going to take John Le Carre to get to the bottom of this odd spy story.
Very good article and better than usual the exposition of its implications. That is, its very easy to sucumb to conspiracy theories for anything CIA and turn any news into paranoia mumbo jumbo. However, to express genuine issues and concerns that may evolve from this (at face value otherwise investment as usual) strategy strikes the precise tone of good reporting.
Of course CIA is watching and the Agency evolves to more "delicate" manuevers among its posibilities. Some rules, however, have prevailed and will prevail in their operations:
They'll always want to increase their information gathering capacity.
They'll do it in ANY WAY, fashionable or not. Of course, mostly legal, emphasis in mostly.
They'll leave no social activity stand by itself wothout monitoring.
They'll leave less and less strings untied, and
They don't like to be watched themselves.
However, in the last rule lies our free society strength. Wether or not they like society to watch them, we will. Its our right and it is our duty. Crosscheking is the cornerstone of democracy. And accountability follows crosschecking.
The old document says it all, check and balances are the guarantee for a free society, whether it be perfect or imperfect, but free.
We all are also watching... we should and we will...
It's a smart move by CIA and other investigation authorities to target social media for clues on criminals. Given the proliferation of internet and social networking websites, I feel they can find useful information. I also find it surprising to read about Al Qaeda having a blog and Taliban using Youtube.
Although browsing through social media can be of use, it can also be used by criminals to deceive the authorities. One can put up false information just to mislead the investigators. I feel the authorities have to be careful of this too and develop ways to verify the information.
I sort of agree with you, however the point is not necessarily that people have delusions that they own the data, but that it some how matters that the CIA is looking at it compared to criminals, foreign intelligence agencies, nosy neighbors, etc. That is the truly delusional aspect of the issues surrounding this.
If you can't abide that notion, then you should follow the advice I was given once for the only sure way to keep a secret: dont tell ANYONE.
Wise advice indeed. In the 90s, I got my hands on some stickers that said "ASSUME THIS PHONE IS TAPPED" and put them on public telephones around town. That's just how you should conduct yourself on the Internet - Assume your enemies are watching you, and don't reveal what you don't want them to know. Let the CIA read public information - crazies are very good at revealing their craziness, so let them.
I agree with you regarding the investment. If they can make the technology better, in this case or others, and provide a benefit to society as a whole, why not? The technology is already there, it's known, it's being used, so why obscure the investment? The thing to obscure is the intelligence analysis that might be produced actually using the technology.
And I find the comments regarding online information mining and censorship amusing. When you post information onto a site, you are agreeing to the terms of service of that site - which may include censorship or publishing the information you provide. And you must realize those terms can be changed. Do you have the right to quit using the site if you don't like it? Absolutely. But you can't "unring the bell".
The underlying claim here is that the information is somehow "mine". But as soon as you post it online, it's living on someone else's servers, handled by their software. It ceases to be "mine" at that point, and becomes "theirs". If you choose to be revealing, don't then later complain that people know what you revealed.
If you can't abide that notion, then you should follow the advice I was given once for the only sure way to keep a secret: dont tell ANYONE.
The Public Investment in Visible is most probably done as a means to dissuade Dissidents,etc from using these Public blog Websites.This way,it saves the CIA the trouble of having to trawl,sift and filter the data in the first place.[Less Analysts on the job I guess...]
But Jart raises a very valid point here-We should be more concerned if the CIA was contracting with Visible to buy the Data than investing in the technology.
you raise a valid point in asking why this was announced in the first place. Perhaps this is some of that 'transparency in government' stuff we've been hearing so much about?
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