Around the Net
Shocker! CIA Tracks Social Media
- YahooNews, Friday, November 4, 2011 2:20 PM
Though unlikely to impact consumer behavior -- and the biggest no-brainer since Double Stuf Oreo’s -- the Associated Press reports that the CIA tracks social media for relevant information. A CIA team informally known as the “vengeful librarians" pores over Facebook, Twitter newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, chat rooms, and “anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly,” according to AP.
They CIA team operates from the Open Source Center -- a CIA facility set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission. With a focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation, the center has several hundred analysts -- the actual number is classified, according to the AP -- who track a broad range of data.
More recently, the center has started focusing on social media after watching “the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009,” the AP notes. "Farsi was the third largest presence in social media blogs at the time on the Web," says the center's director, Doug Naquin.
