Beware Twitter Users: Your Tweets Help the Government Predict the FutureBy Joshua Krause However, the personal information and opinions that we put out on social media doesnt just provide commercial opportunities for advertisers. Its a veritable goldmine for governments as well. Everything that people used to keep to themselves in previous generations, is now willingly shouted into the Internet abyss for all to hear. Social media users often feel free to share their most controversial, subversive, and inflammatory thoughts on a platform that could reach millions of people. Its kind of crazy when you think about it, but its the world we live in today. Governments of course, love this. People say things on the Internet, that in years past would require a warrant to discover. Law enforcement would have to get permission from a judge to tap someones phone, or search their house for diaries and letters that would give them a damning insight into that persons psychology and intentions. Now we just give it away for free. Obviously, this makes it very easy for the government to identify individual threats. Somebody can talk about overthrowing the government on social media, and either theyll be reported or some NSA algorithm will pick them up, and add their comments to a threat matrix. But social media has the potential to give the government so much more. It can also give them an insight into the collective desires of the masses. A new study was recently conducted by Arizona State University, Texas AM, and Yahoo, which discovered that with the right algorithm, you can predict with 70% accuracy, the probability that any given Twitter user is going post something that is part of a protest. They could use this information to predict a protest movement in the real world, as well as how big it will eventually become. The researchers collected 2,686 posts related to the Nigerian general election that took place between February and April of last year, an election that was marred by political violence in the form of the Boko Haram insurgency and that was beset by accusations of voting irregularities. So what predicts when someone begins protesting on Twitter? Its not your personal history so much as your Twitter history of interacting with people who are part of thatmovement. The interaction we study is how users mention each other, researchers Suhas Ranganath and Fred Morstatter wrote to Defense One in an email. In the model, the probability of the future post expressing protest increases if: 1) The post mentioning the user is related to the protest. 2) The author of the post mentioning the user is interested in the protest. We dynamically learn [or teach] the model by testing how each of the previous status messages of the given user are affected by the recent posts mentioning him. We then use the model to predict the likelihood of the user expressing protest in his nextpost. Their accuracy threshold of 70 percent is because what might seem completely unpredictable is in fact part of a pattern, albeit one thats incredibly complex. The researchers employed Brownian motion theory to design the formula, a theory that usually is employed to track the movement of particles, as well as model stock market fluctuations and other highly complicated systems. Brownian Motion for fluid particles models change in the direction of the particle movement on collision with other particles. We take each particle as a social media user. We relate collision with other particles, other users mentioning him, and the change in direction to change of the users inclination to express protest in his next post. We then use the models of Brownian motion to relate the two quantities. We mainly employ this to model the dynamic change in user behavior resulting from interactions over time, Suhas told DefenseOne. I might add that it wasnt just some university or a private company that decided to fund this study. The Office of Naval Research chipped in as well, so clearly the government is interested in this sort of thing. For them, social media is a powerful tool. The deeply personal opinions that you might shout into the Internet, gives the government the power of prognostication. And as computer technology advances, they will be able to do better than 70%. Theyll be able to look at the information you post on social media, compare that to what everyone else is saying, and theyll be able to predict wars, protests, and revolutions long before they occur. And thats an incredibly dangerous power for any government to have. Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshuas reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshuas website is Strange Danger . It isnt just twitter users- its ALL computer users and smart phone users too. All of your data is being sucked up and placed in places like Bluffdale, UT (NSA Utah Data Center) to be data mined against your interests.Needless to say, you are paying for it all. the Utah Data Center is costing $2 Billion and it is one of many. Computers keep records, its what they do. I dont think there is any kind of delete button that actually deletes on-line info. PERSONAL STORY Back in the 1990s I took a picture of my then 7-year old son holding an AK-47 at my friends gun shop (I worked there) My son use that picture for his avatar in his teen years. But he deleted it from all accounts when he started looking for a job, that was 10-years ago. He tells me that it still turns up occasionally. Where is it being stored? Who knows, but its on the net someplace and it seems forever tied to him. Little did we know Moral of the story, on-line info, action, pictures and comments are there for ever so watch what you do! Just my thoughts but..computers are programmed to find patterns follow logical outcomesso remember on several sci-fi shows ( Star Trek comes to mind as one) that ILLOGICAL actions statements caused the computer to break down ? Star Trek was good entertainment, not reality. When you enter wrong information a computer ignores it, asks for more information or probably 20 other things. But what it doesnt do (like in Star Trek) is to burn up with smoke. Computers today are data recording machines that keep data FOREVER and look for patterns. Ever look at something on Amazon or U-Tube? Notice how it shows patterns of what you looked at previously? Now imagine the NSA looking at your patterns. This is what we face, not a computer that will burn up if you try to stump it with false data. In fact putting in false data may set off alarms. YES, I did not imply the computer would burn up. I am questioning whether incorrect or opposite data would cause the algorithm to take a side track come to different conclusions eventually MORPH the ACTUAL results had the original data been 100 % correct. The idea of this is NOT for your or our benefit but to MESS UP the algorithm so it eventually stores feeds itself on JUNK data causing incorrect conclusions. 