CIA Tracks Revolt By Tweet, Facebook

I know most of us know this is going on , but always interesting to read something in the msm about the CIA's monitoring of social networking sites. Providing the White house with daily updates from facebook and twitter feeds.

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the "ninja librarians" are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.

The group's effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.

The agency's Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly.

Although they say "there is no effort to collect on Americans", I very much doubt the technology is not being used on Americans. Surely they want to judge public mood on things like OWS and the like.

The center's analysis ends up in President Barack Obama's daily intelligence briefing in one form or another almost every day. The material is often used to answer questions Obama poses to his inner circle of intelligence advisers when they give him the morning rundown of threats and trouble spots.

"The OSC's focus is overseas, collecting against foreign intelligence issues," said CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood. "Looking at social media outlets overseas is just a small part of what this skilled organization does," she said. "There is no effort to collect on Americans."

I guess none of this is any surprise and nothing that shouldn't be expected in this day and age.

www.npr.org...