This time, to track blogs, tweets, Amazon book reviews. (h/t Lew Rockwell)
America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates – even check out your book reviews on Amazon.
In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using “open source intelligence” – information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.
Does anyone find this surprising? Or did you people who supported spying in the last administration forget that a different group of people might want to use that same power against you?
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