Spies Track Facebook, Twitter in Egypt and Tunisia

 
 

Intelligence agencies are spending more time analyzing Facebook and Twitter, after the social media sites were at the core of surprise revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

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Intelligence officials in the U.K. have recently said the current events illustrated how this "open source" intelligence can be used as a barometer of opinion. Government alike are paying closer attention to the information freely available rather than focus strictly on the "secret" data, a top civil servant said.
"When you look at what is happening, as we speak, in Egypt, the use of the Internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements develop, this is a different world," said Gus O'Donnell, cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service since 2005. "We need to be tied in much more to that sort of world."
O'Donnell pointed out that the Internet has "profoundly changed" how protest movements form.
"Individuals can come together in a way that in the past was more difficult," he added.
Both the Tunisian revolution, which saw the ousting of President Ben Ali, and the Egyptian revolution, calling for the departure of Hosni Mubarak, were organized and managed via Facebook and Twitter. So profound is the influence of social media that in Egypt the government ended up cutting access to the Internet, a move which prompted Google to use technology from its recent acquisition of SayNow to offer access to Twitter through regular mobile phones' voicemail.
Social media has not so much spurred actual events, but rather the speed of instant communication that helps accelerates them.
Monitoring social medias raises a few questions, including whether it is worthwhile for governments to devote resources to open source intelligence. It also questions the use of the likes of Facebook to trace people and the groups they belong to, which has led to arrests in countries such as Sudan.
However, keeping an eye on social media can help gather intelligence on the mood of the people and detect early signs of public anger and unrest, which could then be addressed by governments, or better managed by security forces.
Alternatively, governments could start to use social media themselves to reach out to a younger population and make their own case in format that are easily accessible to that generation.
The line is thin between protection and invasion of people's privacy and rights. Yet the influence of social media on social life is undeniable, especially when it's helping shaping the new political face of some countries in the world.