NSA Eyes Social Networking Sites

It was revealed last month that the National Security Agency has been tracking the phone calls of millions of Americans. Now, according to Newscientist.com, it looks like the agency has plans to expand the program to include the monitoring of social network sites such as MySpace. Individuals often give out all sorts of personal information on social networking sites, from pets' names to sexual and political preferences. "I am continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves," said Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, an encryption software maker. RDF comes into use, this difficulty will pass. "RDF turns the web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people," says David de Roure of the University of Southampton. Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland has explored the technology as it might be used by the NSA. "It certainly made relationship finding between people much easier," he said. "It picked up softer [non-obvious] conflicts we would not have seen before." This might help the NSA sniff out groups of terrorists, money launderers or blacklisted groups, according Amit Sheth, a co-researcher. The information that the Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web Technorati: Doug is a staff writer for Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.