Tracking Through Social Networks, Big Brother is keeping watch.

Lately I've been researching methods of tracking that can be implemented by not only the government but civilians as well. It seems that not long ago we acquired the ability to check in, post photos and tagging people virtually anywhere you go. Some individuals lately have been using these to track people or "stalk" but have we asked how far does this go?

"Well thanks to defense contractor Raytheon we have a general idea of how scary and real this can get. If you're thinking this is crazy, watch the video below to kill the skepticism " 

The Guardian obtained the video below from 2010 from Raytheon, a company that is a major American/Multinational defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. This Video shows a new online tracking tool called Rapid Information Overlay Technology or RIOT for short. In the video Brain Urch, an employee at Raytheon discusses how the system works.

According to Urch the system is integrated into social networks such as; Facebook, FourSquare, Gowalla and Twitter (Remember this is a 2010 Video).  It uses location tags, EXIF data, social network postings and more to build up a complete snapshot of a person's life. Once the individual inputs the persons name they are attempting to locate the system scrapes information and data from these sites, from there a list is provided on what is found on Nick (the "test" subject in the video"). The uneasy part is that Urch states that he is most interested in the social networking result displayed in the search result list, it makes us wonder here at Daedalus Teks what else this system is integrated to if it provides an actual list instead of just the social network results.

From there Urch then explains how parameters can be set to display certain things such as; locations of check-ins,  access to all photos on a social site along with when and where a photo was taken (down to its latitude and longitude coordinates) and also predictions of where the subject will be in the future. Of course this system doesn't predict the future, this system takes the all the information the subject has posted then analyzes it. Once its done the system provides a chart which displays, the time and place a subject checks in and how frequent each check in occurs. This method can have parameters set for the top ten check in places or can be set to a custom parameter.

Now, to the part that worries us the most. Once the system has processed the necessary information it can be broken down even more. The system then allows the individual to look at one specific check in and determine how frequent it is. As shown in the video the system displays a graph on the check in selected and breaks it down in How often the check in occurs; Monthly, Daily and Hourly. Urch then jokes about finding "Nick" at the gym at 6 a.m on Mondays, scary huh? It doesn't stop there, the final feature RIOT's graphical interface has is the ability to look up a subject and view all the associations they have. Everything from shout outs on twitter, status updates and even phone numbers. So next time you want to check-in, tag or even do anything on a social site. Ask yourself, how many people can really see this and/or find me? Its not such a scary thing when you think, "Hey its just facebook, or just foursquare or twitter." but when it assembles all these site into one full timeline/picture/book of a person's life it can be rather un-comforting 

Contrary to several reports out there (1)(2)(3) seen this month on the topic RIOT was not a top secret project until now, as other are stating that this information was not leaked until 2 days ago. Some say the system was announced by Raytheon a couple weeks prior to the video below.

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Some interesting information about RIOT

1. Mining from public websites for law enforcement is considered legal in most countries. In February last year, for instance, the FBI requested help to develop a social-media mining application for monitoring "bad actors or groups".
2. Raytheon says it hasn't sold this auto-stalking tech to any customers yet, although it admits to sharing some of this tech with the US government in 2010. Great!
3. Ginger McCall, an attorney at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said the Raytheon technology raised concerns about how troves of user data could be covertly collected without oversight or regulation.
4. Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon's intelligence and information systems department, said in an email: "Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation's rapidly changing security needs.
5. "Its innovative privacy features are the most robust that we're aware of, enabling the sharing and analysis of data without personally identifiable information [such as social security numbers, bank or other financial account information] being disclosed."
6. In December, Riot was featured in a newly published patent Raytheon is pursuing for a system designed to gather data on people from social networks, blogs and other sources to identify whether they should be judged a security risk.
7. In April, Riot was scheduled to be showcased at a US government and industry national security conference for secretive, classified innovations, where it was listed under the category "big data – analytics, algorithms."
8. According to records published by the US government's trade controls department, the technology has been designated an "EAR99" item under export regulations, which means it "can be shipped without a licence to most destinations under most circumstances".

Special thanks to CNET, GIZMODO and THE GUARDIAN for contributing information about this subject.