The next great tool in monitoring arms control efforts and terrorist activity may be watchful citizens reporting their observations via social media, according to Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller. Gottemoeller gave her take on the role Twitter and Facebook may play in future efforts at a lecture at Stanford University last week. According to Gottemoeller:
The ability to identify patterns and trends in social networks could help the arms control verification process. In the most basic sense, social media can draw attention to both routine and abnormal events. We may be able to use data mining to understand where strange effluents are flowing, to recognize patterns of industrial activity, to queue sensors and satellites. Such queuing could help us to make better use of our scarce and expensive National Technical Means, or in some cases to supplement them in important ways. This is a major issue in an age of budget austerity, when the price tag for big hardware like satellites continues to rise. We need this “big hardware”, but we need to use it efficiently.
She pointed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Red Balloon Challenge in 2009 as an example of how social media had effectively helped the eventual winners find 10 red balloons placed around the world for a $40,000 cash prize.
The State Department website has Gottemoeller’s speech, in text, here.