The U.S. intelligence agencies are
actively hunting down terrorist networks by sifting through and dissecting
social media accounts and posts. The CIA runs a social-media tacking center
that is located in an ordinary-looking building in a Virginia industrial park. Issue4/26/16 “Spy Agency Happenings!” features hand-picked articles and journal
documents that reveal how the U.S. and foreign spy agencies sift through the
vast social media world to accomplish this feat.
The secret CIA installation positioned inside
a characterless industrial park was dubbed the Open Source Center and is staffed by several hundred agents. Some
of these prying-eye agents are called “vengeful librarians” (VL’s, as I name
them). They spend the day and night sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook
messages, online chat logs, Instagram and Pinterest pictures, suspicious Google
search queries, questionable websites…you name it.
The VL’s, many of which hold a master’s
degree in library science, zealously track down terrorists via these digital
social platforms. They scrutinize five million tweets each day from China,
Pakistan and Egypt alone, looking for footprints, cyphers, clues and visceral
hints that extremists may be using a particular site to recruit, make plans
with or train a follower…or to order an attack on America.
The idea of monitoring and analyzing social
media channels was hatched when thousands of Iranian protesters turned to
Twitter during the 2009 Iranian election protests. I remember tweeting back
and forth with dozens of Iranian activists who picketed and marched through the
streets of Tehran. From my living room in states, I gave them comfort and encouraged
them not to give up. Our social media communications ended when the Iranian
government shut down the Internet.
It was during these protests that someone
on the 7th floor of the CIA…or was it the 6th?... must
have asked, “Hey! Why don’t we monitor foreign and domestic social media sites
to get a grasp on the mood of the country…the feelings and emotions of the
populace…to determine the likelihood of the local population acting on some
future political event?”
Well, it happened. The Open Source Center was
created and now is operating in full-swing, predicting geopolitical events that
may unfold by analyzing the moods, sentiments, thoughts and feelings of individuals and groups in hotspot regions around the world.
In addition to tracking down terrorists,
the center also attempts to grasp the intensity of moods and sentiments
surrounding timely and sometimes unfortunate events, such as the bombing of the
Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on October 2015.
The Open
Source Center and their Ninja librarians have, indeed, predicted the
uprising in Egypt and the Arab Spring.
Check out Issue 4/2616 of “Spy AgencyHappenings!” and find out much more about how U.S. and foreign intelligence
agencies employ social media to track down terrorists. This particular issue
also highllights how deft ISIS and other terrorist networks are in using social
media to their advantage. It also has videos on the topic and a forum to voice your thoughts on the matter.
Personally, I’m glad the CIA Open Source
Center is tracking communications on social media that have anything to do with
radical Islam and terrorist-related activities.
Robert Morton, Ed., Ed.S. is a member of the Association Of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community
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