Are you being investigated?

Should we be concerned?

The latest issue of Popular Science has an article about Social-Network-Analysis.

It looks like to me that it is time we start learning how to protect our privacy. This could be the next BIG and growing business catagory.

Here is what I understand about what "they" are doing.

Who? NSA and others

What? Phone calls, e-mails, online postings, financial transactions

Why? The purported reason is to determine "intent".

Investigators analyze information three ways to determine this "intent".

1) Connectedness
2) Betweeness
3) Closeness

According to P.S. these three qualities were the result of research by Carnegie Mellon's David Krackhardt to develop a simplified network.
(see orgnet.com/sna.html)

How they are doing this is by data mining what was first used by marketing companies.

Another mention in the article is Valdis Krebs, and is said to be a pioneer in this field.

People are "nodes" in this analysis that form networks. The links between these nodes are weighted based on pre-defined values, which are then crunched and analyzed using matrix algebra.

People seemingly at the center of a social network with the most connections may not be so central afterall. However, the bottleneck that connects groups together maybe the person that the wiretap goes on. They say the real heavy hitter may actually be the broker that brings the groups together (who could also be a government plant).

They also measure the number of times a person is on the "geodesic" (whatever that means) Which best I can understand is how manytimes a person engages in communicating with people within a given group.

Those that just pass on information to other people are what the pros call "playing the telephone game".

I know from this that Big Brother is probably violating more and more of all our rights to privacy.

My question is: Does anyone know about groups or folks that can help one maintain what privacy we have left.

I would be interested in seeing discussion about how to keep all one's affairs private.

By the way the diagram at the website mentioned about was enhanced by P.S. and used as is.





[edit on 12-8-2006 by The Water Man]