| Updated: 11/04/2011 11:36 am |
Published: 11/04/2011 11:30 am
|
McLEAN, Va. (AP) - In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, the CIA is following tweets - up to 5 million a day.
The idea is that when rebels, militants, activists or diplomats broadcast information on Twitter or elsewhere, America's spies
scoop it up. At the agency's Open Source Center, the analysts the CIA affectionately calls its "vengeful librarians" pore over all
forms of social media in many different languages, from all over the world.
The CIA studies and cross-references the material with clandestinely intercepted information to form a snapshot of anything from the mood in Pakistan after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden to whether a Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
