Secret Service Software Will 'Detect Sarcasm' in Social Media Users
Secret Service agents watch as President Barack Obama leaves on Air Force One in 2013. // Matthew Holst/AP
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.
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.
A couple of years ago, the Homeland Security Department, 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;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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.
Comments
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Facebook, for the first time, has detailed how many user data requests it receives from each country. And since Twitter does the same thing, we can compare the two rivals by a curious but revealing metric: how much governments want their data.
Overall, data about Facebook users are much more coveted: The social network received at least 25,607 government requests in the first half of this year, compared with 1,113 for Twitter. That makes sense since Facebook is bigger, and Twitter stores less sensitive information about its users. There are simply more secrets hiding on facebook.com.
But the comparison gets more interesting when you look at specific countries and think of government data requests as an indicator of the social network’s perceived importance. For instance, Japan requested data from Twitter 87 times in the first six months of 2013; the country asked Facebook for data only once in the same period. Japan is one of the only developed economies where Facebook adoption is weak, while residents regularly set new records on Twitter.
The United States requests more user data from each company than any other country—by far (43–45% of requests to Facebook and 78% of Twitter’s). The same is true for Google, which has published data on such requests for a while."
Read more at Quartz.
U.S. revives group to fight homegrown extremists
By Julia Edwards
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is re-establishing a law enforcement group to fight those it designates as domestic terrorists, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence about such criminals on a national level, Justice Department officials told Reuters.
In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States remains concerned about threats from Islamic extremist groups, but other motives for attacks within U.S. borders must also be watched.
"We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice," Holder said in announcing the group, named the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.
The committee's members will come from the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of federal prosecutors."
Editor; Just see! The so-called official enemy of the state has gone from Al Cia-duuh to domestic anti government "terrorists"! These pigs are setting us up for murder.