FBI to use Twitter to predict crimes

www.telegraph.co.uk

The FBI is trying to develop software that will scan Twitter and Facebook to look for ‘emerging threats’.

The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond.

A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing.

Although the software would only be able to look at information already in the public domain, free speech campaigners have raised concerns.

Jennifer Lynch, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told New Scientist that it could erode the sense of freedom provided by the internet. “These tools that mine open source data, and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US,” she said.

A spokesman from Privacy International told the BBC that the move risked placing large numbers of people under surveillance.

The FBI has previously been suggested that ‘scraping’ social networks is reasonable. The Department of Homeland Security claimed earlier this month that “information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and voluntarily generated. Thus the opportunity not to provide information exists prior to the informational post by the user.”

The Bureau is currently asking potential contractors to estimate costs and suggest solutions. It is seeking software that can “enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing ‘open source’ actionable intelligence".

The proposed web portal will be able to translate from foreign languages as well as detect patterns of users misleading the police.

Although the police, including in Britain, already use Facebook routinely to ascertain the whereabouts of criminals, automatically filtering out irrelevant information remains challenging. The new FBI application will be able to automatically highlight the most relevant information. The FBI is seeking responses by 10 February.