Free Republic

The U.S. government is seeking software that can mine social media to predict everything from future terrorist attacks to foreign uprisings, according to requests posted online by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Hundreds of intelligence analysts already sift overseas Twitter and Facebook posts to track events such as the Arab Spring. But in a formal "request for information" from potential contractors, the FBI recently outlined its desire for a digital tool to scan the entire universe of social media — more data than humans could ever crunch.

Eric Schmidt has an idea for Congress: Do what the President wants. Google's chairman urged lawmakers to pass the $447 billion stimulus plan during an interview with Christiane Amanpour. "The economy is, today, stuck behind the power curve -- it needs a lot of encouragement,” Schmidt, who was a big supporter of Obama during his campaign and was rumored to be a candidate for the Secretary of Commerce post, told the host.

If you are interested in social networks, don’t miss the slick video about Max Schrems’ David and Goliath struggle with Facebook over the way they are treating his personal information.  Click on the red “CC” in the lower right-hand corner to see the English subtitles.Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues.  In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it.  That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Vermont law that barred the sale of doctors' prescription data to drug companies, ruling the law interfered with the pharmaceutical industry's First Amendment right to market its products. Data companies such as IMS Health Inc. gather information from pharmacies on which medicines doctors are prescribing and how often. Drug makers buy the data, using it to refine their marketing pitches and measure which salespeople are the most effective. A 2007 Vermont law effectively banned the practice in the state. It said data-mining companies can't sell the prescription information for marketing...

TONIGHT at 9 pm ET...Each time you use a search engine, you disclose something about yourself. And it tends to be more than just passing interests; your searches reveal your wants, needs, desires, and fears. Over time, you may unwittingly divulge your age, sex, religion, ethnic group, profession, political views and medical concerns.That information can be exploited by its owners (ED: i.e. Google) to create dossiers on you that would make former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover look like a piker.Google is not the company it claims to be. Evolving from an information servant to master, the company's unprecedented centralization...

Details of an emerging data-mining and intelligence-analysis program reminiscent of the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project emerged yesterday, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered. Similar to TIA, which Congress in 2003 de-funded insofar as domestic applications, the Insight Focused Incubator initiative seeks to create a multimedia system that obtains, synthesizes, and analyzes mass volumes of data via the development of an advanced “‘plug and play’ modular architecture” of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies. According to a Special Notice that the Monitor obtained via routine database research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a call...

Customers who use their credit cards at stores can no longer be asked for their ZIP code, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Full title: Google Inc said its "Street View" cars around the world accidentally collected more personal data than previously disclosed, and that it was changing its privacy practices. Excerpt: "It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," Google Vice President of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace said in a post on Google's blog on Friday.

Reporting from Washington - When your doctor writes you a prescription, that's just between you, your doctor and maybe your health insurance company -- right? Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are looking over the doctor's shoulder to keep track of how many prescriptions for each drug the physician is writing. By obtaining data from pharmacies and health insurers, the drug companies learn the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors. That information has become not just a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry but also a source of growing concern...

Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation. It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources. That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years. And it is not just terrorists they are after.  According to the documents, the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is being used to pursue multiple types of non-terrorism domestic investigations. It is also meant to be able to sort through the data — everything from health and travel records to credit card...

Progressive Insurance Companies in Texas is launching a unique program in Texas which may save you money on your car insurance, but has civil libertarians worried, 1200 WOAI news reports. Progressive is offering discounts starting today to motorists who are willing to have a device placed into their cars which will notify the company about the customer’s driving habits. "It doesn't tell where you're driving, it just tells them a little about your driving habits," insurance industry spokesman Jerry Johns told 1200 WOAI news. Johns says the system is in place in other states, but the Progressive attempt is the...

Innocent-seeming questionnaires, tests, and surveys are increasingly being disseminated by government officials so that they have complete histories on every citizen. At this writing, Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina is busy apologizing for her politically incorrect gaffe in arguing against legislation that would expand federal hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation. She pointed to the infamous Matthew Shepard case as a “hoax” inasmuch as Shepard’s killers appeared to have been interested in drugs, not sexual-identity issues. Were Foxx a teenager today, she would be spared the necessity of balancing her conservative views on sexuality against the left’s Orwellian...

HARRISON BROWN, an 18-year-old freshman majoring in mathematics at M.I.T., didn’t need to do complex calculations to figure out he liked this deal: in exchange for letting researchers track his every move, he receives a free smartphone. Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who’s nearby. Mr. Brown and about 100 other students living in Random Hall at M.I.T. have agreed to swap...

MADISON, Wis. - A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers. All worked for Wisconsin's largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database. Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say. Vast computer databases give curious employees the...

You'd think that in a slowing economy, companies would be trying to hold on to every potential customer. Not DirecTV. The satellite operator is weeding out customers, and it has no problem with fewer people signing up. In a conference call with analysts this week, CEO Chase Carey said the company has a new focus on "quality subscribers" (read: ones with money). It finds these subscribers by analyzing their income, age, home ownership, education and other metrics, Carey said in an earnings call with analysts. (Transcript here). DirecTV puts those customers into different categories to figure out who's valuable and...

Granted, the numbers are way bigger But, what sticks out are the ~400 busiest posters.. Let's have a look at the Top 15: kathyinalaska : 30,156 (83 p.d.) luvw : 25,212 (69 p.d.) nwarizonagranny : 25,126 (69 p.d.) pissant : 23,461 (64 p.d.) mylife : 23,038 (63 p.d.) chicagoconservative2: 20,998 (57 p.d.) cindy : 17,721 (49 p.d.) salvation : 17,653 (48 p.d) sunkenciv : 17,519 (48 p.d.) sandrat : 17,374 (47 p.d.) fuddfan : 17,147 (47 p.d.) clintnsuhks :17,118 (45 p.d.) stephenjohnbanker: 16,233 (44 p.d.) calpernia : 16,073 (44 p.d.) eternalvigilance : 15,319 (42 p.d.) That takes some persistence!

The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.... Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are. How you walk could be used to identify you in a crowd. "As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't...

From late 2004 until mid-2006, a little-known data-mining computer system developed by the US Department of Homeland Security to hunt terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and biological weapons sifted through Americans' personal data with little regard for federal privacy laws. Now the $42 million cutting-edge system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS's own internal watchdog

WASHINGTON - The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday. Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices. In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists. The chairman of the Senate...

In late 2002, Alex Gage sold his share of a well-established polling firm and set about convincing Karl Rove that he had the answer to ensuring President Bush's reelection. His pitch was simple: Take corporate America's love affair with learning everything it can about its customers, and its obsession with carving up the country into smaller and smaller clusters of like-minded consumers, and turn those trends into a political strategy. The Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most...