Secret Service using software to 'detect sarcasm' in social media users
The Secret Service is purchasing software to watch users of social networks in real time, according to contract documents.
In a work order posted on Monday, the agency details information the tool will collect -- ranging from emotions of Internet users to old Twitter messages.
Its capabilities will include “sentiment analysis,” "influencer identification," "access to historical Twitter data," “ability to detect sarcasm," and "heat maps" or graphics showing user trends by color intensity, agency officials said.
Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, told The Hill that the agency is only seeking a contract in order to keep an eye on the conversation about the agency itself.
“We monitor news stories about the Secret Service, trends about the Secret Service, just like any other public affairs office would,” he said. Donovan added that scanning for sarcasm is “an attempt not to drink from a fire hose of social media stuff, trying to filter it down and just synthesize all the data that we’re looking at.”
Hey DHS, Secret Service and any other government agency attempting to detect my sarcasm: HERE IT IS IN PLAIN ENGLISH...FUCK YOU!
The automated technology will "synthesize large sets of social media data" and "identify statistical pattern analysis" among other objectives, officials said.
The tool also will have the "functionality to send notifications to users,” they said.
Our objective is to automate our social media monitoring process. Twitter is what we analyze. This is real time stream analysis. The ability to detect sarcasm and false positives is just one of 16 or 18 things we are looking at. We are looking for the ability to quantity our social media outreach,” he told The Washington Post. “We aren’t looking solely to detect sarcasm.”
“We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,” Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.
A couple of years ago, DHS the agency's parent, got in trouble with lawmakers and civil liberties groups for a social media program that would work, in part, by having employees create fake usernames and profiles to spy on other users.
A House Homeland Security Committee panel called DHS officials into a hearing after reports the department tasked analysts with collecting data that reflected negatively on the government, such as content about the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to a Michigan jail. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued DHS for more information on the program.
Employees within the Secret Service's Office of Government and Public Affairs will be using the new system, agency officials said.
Here is a full list of the software’s required functions:
Real-time stream analysis;
Customizable, keyword search features;
Sentiment analysis;
Trend analysis;
Audience segmentation;
Geographic segmentation; (they know exactly where you are)
Qualitative, data visualization representations (heat maps, charts, graphs, etc.);
Multiple user access;
Functionality to have read-only users;
Access to historical twitter data;
Influencer identification; (how many hits or visitors read your social media posts etc.)
Standard web browser access with login credentials;
User level permissions;
Compatibility with Internet Explorer 8;
Section 508 compliant;
Ability to detect sarcasm and false positives;
Functionality to send notifications to users;
Functionality to analyze data over a given period of time; (they know your history)
Ability to quantify the agency's social media outreach/footprint;
Vendor-provided training and technical/customer support;
Ability to create custom reports without involving IT specialists; and
Ability to search online content in multiple languages.
http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2014/06/secret-service-software-will-detect-sarcasm-social-media-users/85633/
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/06/04/secret-service-requests-software-to-track-social-media-trends-detect-sarcasm/
DHS/FBI creating a nation of willing citizen spies on social media:
After reportedly discovering a cache of explosives in the San Francisco apartment of Ryan Kelly Chamberlain, the FBI asked the public for its help in tracking him down, initiating a nationwide manhunt. The 42-year-old political and media consultant dropped out of sight over the weekend. Law enforcement warned he should be considered armed and dangerous.
The public responded, posting and Tweeting.
On Monday, an open letter from Mr. Chamberlain, written in advance but set up for automated release, was posted, detailing his lifelong struggle with depression, love, and work and suggesting that he was at the end of the line. A subsequent letter, reacting to the FBI’s weekend warnings but also posted Monday, disputed the notion that he was a threat.
Monday’s postings have prompted even more online dialogue from those who knew him as well as interested strangers, providing an avalanche of opinions, ideas, and information about his activities and personal taste.
Some of this may eventually prove useful to law enforcement, say experts. But this barrage of social media in the midst of an active manhunt points out the growing positive as well as negative impact of participatory real-time, citizen spying.
Social media is permanently in the mix of any investigation from now on, says Fordham University media professor Paul Levinson, author of “New New Media.” The new technologies enable participation in a way that is almost unimaginable even a generation ago, he says, “which is a double-edged sword.”
On the one hand, he points out, such public participation provides incredible reach. But, the pitfalls are only just now emerging. Police were having a hard time doing their job during the Boston bombing investigation, he says, because people were hanging out on street corners trying to photograph their work as they did it.
But, he adds, it is not going away. “We are going to have to learn to live with it,” he says.
We shouldn't have to learn to live with it! Hitler, Stalin & numerous oppressive regimes have turned citizens and family members into spies.
Michelle Obama is asking kids to spy on family members, click here to read more.
What will it take before the American public wakes up? Spying on everyone in the B/S war on terror has created a gullible & fearful public that suspects everyone!
Private companies & the NSA are spying on social media users using a program called "Squeaky Dolphin," is the most recent demonstration of the immense interception capabilities of intelligence services.
Despite the program's cute name, "Squeaky Dolphin" is shocking in its ability to intercept raw data, which includes sensitive personal and location information, and keep tabs on people across the world who are simply uploading videos or 'liking' the links on their friends' Facebook walls. Such massive, unrestrained capabilities are no way consistent with international law, as their capabilities and execution are clearly neither necessary nor proportionate. Because of this, Privacy International has litigation underfoot to challenge the legality of GCHQ's surveillance activities on the grounds that they fly in the face of the UK's human rights obligations.
Operations like Squeaky Dolphin are yet another manifestation of our governments disregard for privacy rights, and starkly illustrate the problem of secret, unaccountable intelligence gathering.
Frighteningly, the capabilities demonstrated by Squeaky Dolphin - the combination of tapping IP networks and the construction of that with sources such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other services - are not the exclusive preserve of the NSA and GCHQ. Privacy International's Surveillance Industry Index shows that surveillance companies are marketing and selling these services right off the shelf, giving willing governments anywhere the ability to intercept huge amounts of raw data, monitor social networks in real time, and analyse the information obtained to create profiles on specific individuals and targets.,
Click here to read more.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/0602/FBI-manhunt-via-social-media-Citizen-sleuthing-is-a-double-edged-sword.-video