With the explosive growth and popularity of the social media, virtually everyone is hooked up to Facebook, Twitter or a whole host of other social networks. These networks afford a direct glimpse into the personal life of a person and that is precisely why, appropriate privacy settings on these networks are such a big deal. Now, it has been revealed that the U.S. government is looking for ways to spy on data from the online social media.
U.S. authorities have expressed their desire, in the past too, to spy on social media networks. In fact, some tech giants were being talked to by the authorities so that they would surrender whatever data is required from them by the government, a demand that was preposterous and negated all basic human rights.
Now, U.S. Department of State issued a procurement request recently. The request, made earlier this month, essentially sought such tools which can furnish “deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web.” Such companies who have been building such tools are encouraged to bid and U.S. government will accept the bids from such companies.
The tools that are being asked for will be used to monitor and analyze conversations in at least seven languages across the online social media. It has been reported that U.S. military already has a tool called Web Information Spread Data Operations Module, which can be used to monitor sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Source: New Scientist
Courtesy: BGR
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