Some recent discoveries may change the way you view personal security, even in the protection of your own home. For many years now the topic of “Big Brother” has come up as this mythical all-knowing government power that watches over our every move, yet it is normally put off as a joke or something that could never be possible. One of the Associated Press’s latest reports seems to think otherwise. They claim that the CIA has actually created a specific task unit under the program named the Open Source Center. Basically this force is now following and picking through up to five million tweets every single day. Twitter is not even the only social media site that is being monitored in this fashion; Facebook and most other large-scale Internet forums are being watched.
Now the first idea that popped into my head when I read this report was of course, “Oh, the Government is searching for terrorists through the internet again…” Well it turns out my initial thoughts were incorrect. The idea behind this specific campaign is to gauge the public’s reaction to major disasters or events. This may seem silly to the average taxpayer and I have to admit it does sound like a gigantic waste of time and money, though there is always a reason for these types of movements. Apparently one of the most recent times this task force was used heavily and therefore had a large impact on some government decisions was after the death of Osama Bin Laden. Clearly the leadership in our country actually values our opinion so maybe this type of inspection should be greeted as more of a compliment than a loss of personal security and the anonymity that the Internet usually provides.
This force is code-named the “Vengeful Librarians,” and as funny as that sounds it refers to their top analysts that more often than not have a masters degree in library science. These intelligent “Librarians” who happen to be the best our country has to offer were started up after 9/11 as a part of the increased counter-terrorism campaign that the United States now follows. More specifically our higher-ups watched the revolution occur in 2009 when the Green Party took over Iran and basically an entire nation was destroyed and re-created with new leaders in a matter of days. Astonishingly, the Vengeful Librarians actually predicted the extremely recent revolution in Egypt, though they did not have a specific date in mind as to when it would occur, just through their social-media monitoring. If you are wondering where exactly these reports end up… well they go to the highest peak of our government, right to Mr. Obama’s briefing room along with the other CIA daily intelligence reports. While some people questioned the legality of this program the AP made a point to assure people that private facebook and twitter accounts were still completely secure and the information being processed was already fully open to the public. Does this type of communications monitoring classify as Big Brother? Well, that’s for you to decide!
