The Vengeful Librarians

CIA actively monitors 5 million tweets every day

Updated: Nov 04, 2011 2:32 PM EDT

  
By Andrew Couts
Provided by

          As if we needed any further confirmation that Big Brother is, in fact, watching, the Associated Press reports today that the Central Intelligence Agency has an entire department devoted to monitoring Twitter and Facebook posts. In addition, the CIA briefs President Obama daily on top tweets and popular Facebook posts and trends.

     The arduous task, carried out by a team known as the "Vengeful Librarians," includes sifting through more than 5 million tweets a day. (In total, Twitter's 100 million users publish approximately 140 million tweets every day.) Doing so has enabled the CIA to view how events in the US are being received overseas — like, say, the assassination of Osama bin Laden — as well as allowing the agency to keep tabs on international events, like the uprising in Egypt this spring.

        The CIA's social media monitoring, which is carried out by "several hundred" analysts at a facility in McLean, Virginia, and elsewhere around the US, was started on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission as a way to bolster the agency's counterterrorism and counterproliferation initiatives.

        Monitored sources include traditional newspapers and television broadcasts, as well as social media. The focus on Twitter began in 2009 after the micro-blogging platform played a key role in the Iranian Green Revolution.

         Because tweets do not always have location data tied to them, the Vengeful Librarians cannot track where exactly the majority of tweets originate. Instead, the intelligence team keeps track of what language tweets are published in. For instance, the team wanted to find out the world reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden. It found that the majority of tweets published in either Urdu (the language of Pakistan), or Chinese were mostly negative. Arabic and Turkic tweets accused Obama of being pro-Israel. Tweets in Hebrew thought Obama's speech was too pro-Arab.

        The CIA team has also used Twitter to monitor reports of real-time events, and can focus on a few Tweeters who are publishing accurate reports. The team found that, in these situations, other Twitter users actively stamp out erroneous information when it is reported, which proves the usefulness of Twitter as a primary source for breaking news.

          So, for those of you out there who forget that what you say online can often be seen by anyone, remember: in some windowless office building in Northeast Virginia, a CIA agent may be watching.

NOTE:  I read this very interesting story, which naturally brings to mind the 1975 motion picture Three Days Of The Condor, featuring Robert Redford, Max von Sydow and Faye Dunaway, on the WTVM- News Leader 9 -- Columbus, Georgia news site, which we follow because our cousin Eudora Linde works there as a producer.  We are all extremely proud of Eudora.

Bats Like Birds; Hounds Of Hate; Madmen In Mirrors

  

Last night all around our house bats flew like birds. 

      "Free as a bird;" "free as a bat" -- the beauty and energy was entire and invigorating.

         My wife speculated that the bats were probably super-mobilized by a feeding frenzy resulting from insect relocation and surfacing caused by Hurricane Irene.

        I expect she's right about this (she usually is), but it's a little disturbing still.

       The grandeur of the bats' flight and the mild effects of vodka were able slightly to dispel the filth defiling the beautiful late-summer day, which cropped up in a morning posting on the "Hatebook" page of a noted rock critic/soi-disant lefty radical in the following form:

 

" We do have an evil Jew in Ohio who wants to be our next U.S. Senator, replacing a great progressive, Sherrod Brown."

       This post sort of oddly (that is to say, "out of context" oddly) appeared amid some online colloquy supposedly examining the Hatebook page-owner's profound query: "what life experience could have made Eric Cantor into such an uncharitable and inhuman fuck?"  The genesis of his question was  this Los Angeles Times article discussing the status of federal emergency appropriations for Hurricane Irene victims.  The story detailed in part how legislation providing such funds had already been passed in the (Republican) U.S. House of Representatives, but was currently being held up in the (Democratic) U.S. Senate and contained  what I considered to be innocuous, fairly predictable comments by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virigina),  Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate.

 

        Unwisely (in retrospect), I commented that I thought the Hatebook page-owner had overreacted to the Times article in terms of what had actually been reported.

        This unleashed the Hounds of Hate.

          Amazingly, when I objected to the "evil Jew" interjection (which had been supplied, to my surprise, by a fairly well-known music critic residing in the Cleveland, Ohio area), not one of the enlightened participants in this particular grove of despair, self-love and self-righteousness joined in my remonstrance, including the Hatebook page-owner himself, an old acquaintance who happens to be Jewish, but who is, I assume (we've never discussed the subject), "secular" and therefore presumably "above it all."   To be fair, he did ask the members of his sick coven "to please leave religion out of this," but frankly I found his reaction and that request an inadequate remedy to the vileness of the remark.  In fact, his urging immediately prompted another of the pack members (call them "Fiends" to keep the Facebook/Hatebook analogy going) quickly to remark about Rep. Cantor himself:   

"It's pretty clear he's ashamed of being Jewish and is still trying to assimilate with the Goyim and the southern anti-semites with his antics, and they are antics. He should just change his religion like that a-hole Chafetz and get on with it."   

        In the end, as enlightened and Manhattan-intellectual as I expect he considers himself to be, this particular Hatebook page-owner is just a member of the Angry Mob.  Based on his behavior here, I expect he would ignore and tolerate any injustice that didn't affect him personally that might draw his attention away from an existence of  self-regard and re-reviewing old Cheap Trick records.  

          Perhaps it's not completely his fault.  Perhaps the fault lies partly with Hatebook.  The "activity" there counterfeits authentic interpersonal interaction, i.e., behavior prompting empathy; behavior that has immediate and long-term personal consequences.  It resembles nothing so much as madmen mumbling to themselves in mirrors.  I was so relieved when my daughter voluntarily and without prompting removed herself from its grip.

         The rest is silence except for the bats' delightful flapping. I used to be scared of them, but then I realized they're fine. When they approach close, it's amazing.  It's everyone else I'm scared of.