Pentagon datamines social networks

New Scientist reports that the Pentagon is datamining social networks.

This is to allow the US government to draw up detailed personal profiles of individuals, according to what they post to the internet.

It is also intended to work out which individuals are connected to blacklisted organisations, either directly, or through people they interact with online.

Ironically, attempts by the W3C to make the web more interaccessible via different data formats - the so-called semantic web, using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) - will expedite this process.

While it’s certainly a debatable issue as to how much privacy individuals should be allowed in a post-9/11 world, the simple fact remains that data collection for its own sake benefits nobody.

The 9/11 bombers were known to the FBI - the London bombers were known to MI6 - but in both high profile incidents, even though terrorist suspects were identified, the intelligence agencies failed to act on the information gathered.

In the meantime, individuals should be very aware that anything they post online - at places such as MySpace - may not simply help the US government create a detailed personal profile - but this form of datamining is also likely to be used by commercial organisations.