Thoughtcrime

FBI Seeks Social Media X-Ray Machine

By Leslie Walker

 

Uncle Sam's top cops want a new app for peering into social media to see what people are saying that might involve illegal activity or pose threats to national security.

©Mark Wiens/ Getty Images

The FBI put out a request for information this month as part of market research for its proposed new "social media application" project, to see if the information technology industry actually has the capability to build what it wants. Responses from technology companies and other potential vendors are due by Feb. 10.

Privacy advocates generally oppose government monitoring of social media, but so much social media chatter is already public that it won't be easy to stop development of the analytical app the FBI wants. PC World called it a "social network spy app."

The CIA already routinely monitors social media for global threats, as NPR reported in a story last week when it took a closer look at the CIA's Open Source Center for foreign intelligence. Analysts at the center, reportedly is housed in an office building in McLean, Va., told the visiting reporter they consider themselves "ninja libarians."

The FBI's information request document describes its project as an "open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application." The social media monitoring feature would be part of a broader electronic surveillance and analytical system the FBI is developing, which includes extensive geo-location and mapping features.

Goals of the social media monitoring app, the FBI document states, would include:

• "detecting potential threats"
• "developing threat profiles"
• "outline possible courses-of-action
• "determine time frame for action by bad actors"
• "identify and develop tactical picture of the location for threat events"
• "develop intelligence products for counter-measures"

In its document, the FBI stated that social media already is a "valued source of information" to its intelligence teams. "Social media has become a primary source of intelligence," the document said, " because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations."

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Internet Censorship

"Everything which degrades culture shortens the path to servitude."

                                                             -Camus

I have been on the Internet for a long time. I have communicated with engineers, scientists, coders, writers, artists, designers and with some of the most intelligent people on the planet. Intellectuals do not care what you look like or what you believe in. They care about what you can do. Only ignorant, insecure control freaks fear the Internet.

The recent attempts to muzzle the web reveal the true colors of the "powers that be". Just as the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror' were excuses to circumvent the Bill of Rights, the war on piracy has been an excuse to censor the web.

The mainstream media and Washington have been in bed for a long time. Some media outlets appear to be nothing more than the PR departments of certain government sectors. When you have a monopoly on the manipulation of public opinion, I guess it's difficult to accept that a thirteen year old blogger in Peoria may have the ability to undermine your efforts.

Take a good look at what these people are trying to censor. Are they going after porno sites? Are they attacking gambling sites? Of course not. They generate way too much income. They're attempting to stifle social media sites; sites that allow people that don't own newspapers, publishing companies or TV studios to express their views to the world. What more evidence do you need?

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Ayn Rand

"No one can tell men what they must live for. No one can take that right-because there are things in men, in the best of us, which are above all states, above all collectives! Do you ask: what thing? Man's mind and his values. Look into yourself, honestly and fearlessly. Look and don't tell me, don't tell anyone, just tell yourself: what are you living for?

Aren't you living for yourself and only for yourself? call it your aim, your love, your cause-isn't it still your cause? Give your life, die for your ideal-isn't it still your ideal? Every honest man lives for himself. The one who doesn't-doesn't live at all. You cannot change it. You cannot change it because that's the way man is born, alone, complete, an end in himself. No laws, no Party, no G.P.U. will ever kill that thing in man which knows how to say 'I'. You cannot enslave men's mind, you can only destroy it. You have tried. Now look at what you're getting. Look at those whom you allow to triumph. Deny the best in men-and see what will survive. Do we want the crippled, creeping, crawling, broken monstrosities that we're producing? Are we not castrating life in order to perpetuate it?"

"And who-in this damned universe-who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want? Who can answer that in human sounds that speak for human reason?...But you've tried to tell us what we should want. You came as a solemn army to bring a new life to men. You tore that life you knew nothing about, out of their guts-and you told them what it had to be. You took their every hour, every minute, every nerve, every thought in the farthest corners of their souls-and you told them what it had to be. You came and forbade life to the living. You're driven us all into an iron cellar and you've closed all doors, and you've locked us airtight, airtight till the blood vessels of our spirits burst! Then you stare and wonder what it's doing to us. Well, then, look! All of you who have eyes left- look!"

                                                                                                                 -Ayn Rand
                                                                                                                 We The Living

                                                                       

Russia in the 1920's and present day Santa Barbara have a few things in common.

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City Of Angels

Yeah, LA is the city of angels...fallen angels.

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