In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't feel like this is news. I mean, I suppose the fact that the CIA's social media monitoring outfit is doing global sentiment analysis on Twitter is cool. I just don't see why this is an exclusive, considering that it's the CIA's job to spy on the world for the benefit of the US.
Am I wrong?
It's safe to assume that everything you do online—yes, everything—is public. Public as in standing-in-the-middle-of-Main-Street-during-a-parade public. It's also safe to assume that the CIA is watching as much of everything public in the world as it possibly can at any given moment. And they're probably watching much of the private stuff, too.
Again, maybe I'm cynical, or I've seen too many movies. But I get the sense that there's this tacit agreement from the people that we will be passively spied upon, and in return we have a heightened expectation of safety and government effectiveness and efficiency in the national security arena. Of course, there are occasionally public outcries about the government's behavior in this agreement (think warrantless wiretapping), but the arrangement remains mostly intact.
If only I knew that the story about the CIA putting some hyperintelligent analysts in a brick-walled cubicle farm could be an "exclusive," I'd be a one-man news-breaking machine.
No comments:
Post a Comment