US Intelligence agency to monitor Wikipedia edits, the "Open Source Indicators Program" Options

[It's the blimp, Frank]

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), a branch of the office of the director of national intelligence, will begin next April to monitor a variety of internet activities, including changes in Wikipedia articles. Will they crack down on POV pushers? Will there be midnight raids on the homes of Jayjg or Will Beback? (maybe Jayjg's identity will be made public!)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch...ur-mind/246445/

[Milton Roe]

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), a branch of the office of the director of national intelligence, will begin next April to monitor a variety of internet activities, including changes in Wikipedia articles. Will they crack down on POV pushers? Will there be midnight raids on the homes of Jayjg or Will Beback? (maybe Jayjg's identity will be made public!)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch...ur-mind/246445/

I'm hoping that massive amount of crap in WP will taint IARPA's "total information awareness" program like botulism in a bottle of sausages. Serve them right.

[GlassBeadGame]

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), a branch of the office of the director of national intelligence, will begin next April to monitor a variety of internet activities, including changes in Wikipedia articles. Will they crack down on POV pushers? Will there be midnight raids on the homes of Jayjg or Will Beback? (maybe Jayjg's identity will be made public!)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch...ur-mind/246445/

Western intelligence and even Western media miss the boat time and time again because they rely on informants/contacts that, as much as possible look, act and think like their handlers and who tell them what they want to hear. I don't see how digging into social media will help with this. Better to learn to talk to people who say things you don't like.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

Western intelligence and even Western media miss the boat time and time again because they rely on informants/contacts that, as much as possible look, act and think like their handlers and who tell them what they want to hear.

That sounds like a Wikipedia editor cherry-picking sources to push POV.

[Milton Roe]

Western intelligence and even Western media miss the boat time and time again because they rely on informants/contacts that, as much as possible look, act and think like their handlers and who tell them what they want to hear. I don't see how digging into social media will help with this. Better to learn to talk to people who say things you don't like.

Agree on that, but remember the money aspect. Journalists who talk to people with unpopular opinions end up writing articles their readers don't want to read (no way to increase circulation).

As for intelligence operations, remember that DARPA and its cousins run on essentially grant proposals. That means building high tech machines (in this case, one more set of computers and data crunching programs ala the NSA), not paying people merely to talk to people.

Incidently, if you want to know why American medical care costs so much without delivering anything for it, it's for exactly the same reason. Nobody wants to pay for people to talk to people. They are willing to pay only for really fancy high-tech machines. MRI scanners and angio suites for medicine; jets, satellites, and computers for the military. This isn't really a political issue. It has more to do with what we'd call "billable hours." The only profession I know of that has really solved his problem is the legal one, and the US government is not willing to pay their standard hourly rates to anybody. The President of the United States, even if you assume a 40 hour week, only gets paid $200/hr.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

Agree on that, but remember the money aspect. Journalists who talk to people with unpopular opinions end up writing articles their readers don't want to read (no way to increase circulation).

I don't buy that one. I think the media determines which ideas are popular. The readers aren't making the decisions here.

[Milton Roe]

Agree on that, but remember the money aspect. Journalists who talk to people with unpopular opinions end up writing articles their readers don't want to read (no way to increase circulation).

I don't buy that one. I think the media determines which ideas are popular. The readers aren't making the decisions here.

You think Judith Miller talked to Chalabi and got the idea that Iraq was thinking of weapons of mass destruction, with no regard for her audience reading the NYT? An audience who (one supposes) was otherwised predisposed to think of Iraq as basically neutral on the issue of 9/11, and not really any threat to New York or Israel, or really anybody?

Baloney. Newspapers print what sells. If it bleeds, it leads. If it's scary, it's cherry. Fury or worry, we supply in a hurry.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

Baloney. Newspapers print what sells. If it bleeds, it leads. If it's scary, it's cherry. Furry or worry, we supply in a hurry.

If that were true, the 911 Truther movement would be getting front page coverage.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Baloney. Newspapers print what sells. If it bleeds, it leads. If it's scary, it's cherry. Furry or worry, we supply in a hurry.

If that were true, the 911 Truther movement would be getting front page coverage.

There are limits. Implicitly this means the newspapers tell people what they want to believe or are titillated by. Nobody really wants to believe the government helped in 9/11.

{{Citation Needed}}

There is evidence to the contrary.

[GlassBeadGame]

Moved some off topic posts to the annex.