Facebook is a fantastic tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, and Twitter lets users share all kinds of information with their followers. These giant social networks are also packed full of information that advertisers trip over themselves to take advantage of, but another group is looking to make use of the social sites and others. The U.S. Department of State issued a procurement request earlier this month seeking tools that can provide “deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web,” New Scientist reported. The government agency will accept bids from interested companies that can build such tools, and they will be used to monitor conversations in at least seven different languages in an effort to identify potential security threats. New Scientist notes that the military can already monitor sites like Facebook and Twitter with a Lockheed Martin-built tool called the Web Information Spread Data Operations Module, or WISDOM.
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