Outsourced Intelligence: How the FBI and CIA Use Private Contractors to Monitor Social Media

[marmar]

Outsourced Intelligence: How the FBI and CIA Use Private Contractors to Monitor Social Media

Thursday, 13 June 2013 09:49
By Stephen Benavides, Truthout | News Analysis


Right now, companies like Palantir Technologies Inc, Booz Allen Hamilton, and i2 are mining your Facebook and Twitter data in an effort to discern whether you're a terrorist, have ties to terrorists or maybe just have the potential to someday become one. They also want to know if you have links to the Boston bombers, Kim Jong-un or Darth Vader, and they've been paid millions upon millions of dollars to do this on behalf of the US Special Operations Command, FBI, CIA, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), the Army, Marines and the Air Force. Initially a small start-up conveniently funded in part the CIA's nonprofit venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, Palantir Technologies is now the leading embodiment of online Big Brother.

Not only is Palantir Technologies not part of the US government, they'd like you think they're run by young, techy hipsters who are fond of stuffed Care Bears, My Little Ponies, hegdehogs and flip-flops, as the photos fronting their web site would indicate. In fact, this once "innocent" start-up - responsible for identifying the Chinese cyber espionage network Ghostnet - has become part and parcel to the intelligence failure leading up to the Boston and Watertown tragedies.

The software employed by the FBI and CIA is a "Java-based platform for analyzing, integrating, and visualizing several types of data," according to to Army Test and Evaluation Command (ETEC). It uses a provisioning database, where all modifications performed on database objects and entities are documented. The software allows for the plotting of current or historical targets of high-value individuals (HVI's) taking into account time, location, transfer of funds history, as well as social media and other online communications. While this may seem super technologically, according to the Operational Assessment Report approved by US Army Brigadier General Laura J. Richardson, the software was so easy to use, it took participants less than one hour of training to learn how to perform program functions allowing completion of assigned duties.

The foundation of Palantir's software was initially developed as part of PayPal's fraud detection system, which taught computers to detect and flag suspicious money transfers so human analysts would be able to follow up. At issue was the software's inability to keep up with ever-changing tactics employed by criminals and the increasing volume of fraudulent transactions. In response, PayPal's computer scientists developed a system that would track the individual's computer, whom they did business with, where those people were located and fit it all into a transaction history database. Now instead of looking at a boring spreadsheet, analysts were able to visualize networks using streamlined graphical user interfaces (GUI), allowing them to see patterns that the previous software had missed. Palantir's government work remains classified, so we don't know exactly what changes were made to transform a fraud detection program into something that the FBI and CIA use to track high-value targets, but we can certainly take a guess that it is empowered by the Patriot Act. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/16943-outsourced-intelligence-how-the-fbi-and-cia-use-private-contractors-to-monitor-social-media

[kenny blankenship]

1. I wonder what company has the contract for DU?

Any poster out there care to clue us in, and maybe take a bow? Don't be shy. We appreciate all the hard work you do for us.

[JDPriestly]

3. I have some ideas as to who some plant posters might be.

But it would be really rude to share them so I will remain silent lest it cause me to be booted from more than the BO club -- from which I am already persona non grata.

[indepat]

2. Any outsourcing of national security functions should be outlawed imo: it's

not nice, even naughty, for big brother to violate our constitutional liberties and freedoms, but to hire for-profit firms to violate our constitutional freedoms should be prohibited, verboten, outlawed, and raise every American's hackles to the point of making us as mad as wet hornets: to wit, nonsense up with which we would not put.