Monthly Archives: November 2011

The CIA, Link Analysis and a Silicon Valley Startup

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 27, 2011

This site is all about link analysis and how drawing connections between various networks of data is invaluable to intelligence efforts. That idea was perfectly encapsulated in the recent BusinessWeek feature about the Silicon Valley firm Palantir. This paragraph from … Continue reading →

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New Justice Department Proposal Could Make Dating Profiles More Truthful

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 16, 2011

Moving in the name of national security, a U.S. Department of Justice proposal to penalize those who violate website terms and conditions could end up making dating site profiles more truthful. Justice Department Deputy Section Chief Richard Downing suggested amendments … Continue reading →

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Media Reacts to Judge’s Ruling Granting Government Access to Twitter Data

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 14, 2011

The big news this weekend in the world of social media and national security was a U.S. federal court ruling that Twitter must turn over data in a probe of the WikiLeaks organization. At the center of the decision are … Continue reading →

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Mexican Cartel Decapitates Man in Another Warning to Social Media Users

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 11, 2011

Mexican authorities found the body of a tortured and decapitated man Wednesday near the Texas border. It was the fourth murder in the border city of Nuevo Laredo linked to social media activity. The man’s body was accompanied by a … Continue reading →

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75 Percent of British Favor Giving Government Social Data to Prevent Rioting

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 10, 2011

Following the social unrest during the summer that swept England with help of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger, a poll shows that 70 percent of adults support the restriction of such services during such events. Only 27 percent disagreed, The … Continue reading →

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Internet Usage and Internet Snooping Growing in Uzbekistan

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 8, 2011

Despite the autocracy’s best efforts, Internet usage has been growing in Uzbekistan in recent years. With that growth has come the government’s fear of an Arab Spring-style revolt fueled by social media. As a result, it looks like the government … Continue reading →

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CIA’s Social Media Monitoring Program May Just Be the Start

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 7, 2011

The big news this weekend in the world of national security and social media was the unsurprising revelation that the CIA maintains a division solely devoted to tracking social media activity. The Associated Press reported that self-proclaimed “ninja librarians” in … Continue reading →

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Meet the Man Who Revolutionized Network Science (and Could Control the World)

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 4, 2011

Understaning of how networks work, how things are connected and how future connections might be predicted have all evolved in recent years thanks to the work of Albert-László Barabási, a Romanian-born physicist at the University of Notre Dame. Popular Science … Continue reading →

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Social Robots Prove How Easy It is to Mine Data From Facebook

by Tanveer Ali Posted on November 3, 2011

A quartet of researchers recently proved that a handful of “socialbots” could be used to exploit data from Facebook that users would otherwise believe to be hidden from the public, PCWorld reports. Different than traditional online robots, these socialbots are … Continue reading →

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