This is a copy-and-paste from a previous comment I made on the subject of school student social media monitoring, but I think it's relevant here too:
---
Social media monitoring is a huge industry at the moment, which I can say from first-hand experience. Lots of businesses, individuals, and organizations want to know what is being said about them or their field.
Even though no company providing these services can have perfect coverage (not even a perfect coverage of public internet communications), or perfect accuracy (generally it boils down to what you can express with search facets and boolean expressions), they can very aggressively sell the capability to people and organizations, because the 'idea' makes sense, and the fear/need is genuine - maybe there are relevant good/bad things happening out there that we need to know about.
I think this may be the real story here: there are private companies incentivized to sell surveillance of public communications, regardless of end-result quality for the customer, and education is just one of many places where that is relevant.
I don't think this is going to change - we now take for granted that search engines can see what is on the public web, and the same will become true of public social media -- although these tools are (generally) not yet as well known to the public as Google web search.
I'd personally really like to see distributed and private social communications technology to take off, so that this kind of legitimized spying becomes near-irrelevant, and I think there are big opportunities there - but we're not there yet and there'll be some interesting ground to navigate in the meantime.
---
It's interesting that this group is using the full Twitter firehose - and when you realize that this is just one of many other companies providing the same type of services (either in public or behind closed doors), it becomes clear that an entire industry now has incentives to encourage people to capture and publish more of their life - with additional geolocation/contextual information where possible as well.
"We’re intimately familiar with OSINT needs and deliverables, and we will deliver the Deep Web Intelligence that finds the bad guys and lets you get them behind bars."
Deep Web Intelligence? via Twitter? This sounds pretty delusional. Is the average criminal really twittering information about their crimes? Kids these days..
'Deep Web' likely refers to their access to the entire Twitter stream, though it's far too buzzword-y.
With that said, there can be huge value in aggregating and correlating all social media commentary occurring in a specific area and around a set group of subjects. The bad guys will seldom reveal their activities on Twitter or Facebook but what others nearby are saying can help track them down.
Just to give an example in another sphere, social media analysis was very useful in tracking M23's mortar and rocket attacks on Goma during the recent flare-up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with judging the success of the FARDC and United Nations Force Intervention Brigade counter-offensive.
It will always be limited of course, in no small part because very few people enable geolocation on their tweets and social media posts will never provide a complete picture of an event. But used smartly it does have some value.
It's neat that they got access to the firehouse (most likely licensing it from gnip) but geolocation is still an issue. Only a small percentage of Twitter users turn on geolocation. Last count I heard was under 10%.
My fatherland "The Netherlands" does also have these techniques in their police systems. If people start/organize a riot/fight using twitter (mostly after soccer games), they easily see this.
Not that I'm a criminal, but I don't use Twitter. I made a couple of accounts, but never used them. (forgot credentials for the first account due to lack of interest - the second has been idling for months)
So, the "cops" aren't really watching my "tweets in real-time."
A number of cities now have a technology called shotspotter. It's basically a network of acoustic sensors on rooftops that are designed to detect gunfire and alert the police. Many big city police departments have a major problem where a shooting will take place and the cops won't find out about it until someone stumbles into a hospital, at which point catching the bad guys becomes much harder. Lots of people are unwilling to call 911 either because they fear retaliation for snitching or they don't trust the cops or they're apathetic and they don't think any good will come from reporting a crime. I imagine one motivation for this twitter scanning technology is similar - if they're monitoring tweets in real time they can get a precise location of a shooting and also the twitter handle of a witness.
14 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 43.9 ms ] thread---
Social media monitoring is a huge industry at the moment, which I can say from first-hand experience. Lots of businesses, individuals, and organizations want to know what is being said about them or their field.
Even though no company providing these services can have perfect coverage (not even a perfect coverage of public internet communications), or perfect accuracy (generally it boils down to what you can express with search facets and boolean expressions), they can very aggressively sell the capability to people and organizations, because the 'idea' makes sense, and the fear/need is genuine - maybe there are relevant good/bad things happening out there that we need to know about.
I think this may be the real story here: there are private companies incentivized to sell surveillance of public communications, regardless of end-result quality for the customer, and education is just one of many places where that is relevant.
I don't think this is going to change - we now take for granted that search engines can see what is on the public web, and the same will become true of public social media -- although these tools are (generally) not yet as well known to the public as Google web search.
I'd personally really like to see distributed and private social communications technology to take off, so that this kind of legitimized spying becomes near-irrelevant, and I think there are big opportunities there - but we're not there yet and there'll be some interesting ground to navigate in the meantime.
---
It's interesting that this group is using the full Twitter firehose - and when you realize that this is just one of many other companies providing the same type of services (either in public or behind closed doors), it becomes clear that an entire industry now has incentives to encourage people to capture and publish more of their life - with additional geolocation/contextual information where possible as well.
Deep Web Intelligence? via Twitter? This sounds pretty delusional. Is the average criminal really twittering information about their crimes? Kids these days..
With that said, there can be huge value in aggregating and correlating all social media commentary occurring in a specific area and around a set group of subjects. The bad guys will seldom reveal their activities on Twitter or Facebook but what others nearby are saying can help track them down.
Just to give an example in another sphere, social media analysis was very useful in tracking M23's mortar and rocket attacks on Goma during the recent flare-up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with judging the success of the FARDC and United Nations Force Intervention Brigade counter-offensive.
It will always be limited of course, in no small part because very few people enable geolocation on their tweets and social media posts will never provide a complete picture of an event. But used smartly it does have some value.
No, but observers may be. Think Seattle WTO 1999...
I submit this into evidence of rampant human stupidity: https://twitter.com/NeedADebitCard
Never underestimate what people will do to try and feel special in their tiny social spheres.
So, the "cops" aren't really watching my "tweets in real-time."
http://bigdata.brightplanet.com/Portals/179268/docs/BlueJay_...