Who's Tracking You

POLYCONUNDRUM - It is a wonder if the general population is quite certain they are comfortable with being tracked. Some folks are horrified by what tracking technology is capable while other just shrug their shoulders and say "I don't have anything to hide". Apathy by both the general population and law maker seems to have the upper hand at the moment.

The day is fast approaching where sophisticated tracking capability is in the hands of any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a few bucks. However, some countries are starting to address this privacy issue while other countries like Britain, China, and the US embrace the technology with a shrug and "You shouldn't have anything to hide."

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Just a month ago, Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, reported the FBI was looking for software. Now this month The Guardian, a London based newspaper, reports they have found what the FBI is looking for produced by a US Defense contractor Raytheon.

In this video obtained by the Guardian, Raytheon's 'principal investigator' Brian Urch explains how the Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot) software uses your activity on social networks to track people's movements, contacts, and even their routines. According to the video they can pinpoint that you mostly log in to your social media from 6 to 7 am from your local gym. And all this is done seamlessly and very quickly in the program designed by Raytheon. It's so efficient it's scary.

{youtube}http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bon8BY4tavA{/youtube}

I know that inter-departmental communication can sometimes be slow but, it seems only a matter of time before these two agencies get together if they haven't already done so. So I wonder what the Guardian's finders fee will be?


innerself subscribe graphic


Software that tracks people on social media created by defense firm

Ryan Gallagher - The Guardian

Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data like a 'Google for spies', drawing ire from civil rights groups.

A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.

A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Raytheon says it has not sold the software – named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – to any clients.

But the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace.

Continue Reading The Article...

FBI seeking social media monitoring tool

(AFP) – Jan 26, 2012

WASHINGTON — The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a tool to mine social media for intelligence tips.

The US domestic law enforcement agency is asking information technology contractors about the feasibility of building a tool that would "enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing 'open source' actionable intelligence."

Continue Reading The Article...