The Value of Social Media as an Information Source for Intelligence Exploitation - Term Paper Example

THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN INFORMATION SOURCE FOR INTELLIGENCE EXPOLITATION The Value of Social Media as an Information Source for Intelligence Expolitation Author Author’s Affiliation Date Introduction At the present, the use of the internet has become very common in almost every walk of life. Now people widely use the Internet to carry out different activities of daily life. Normally, they use the internet for shopping, banking and entertainment. But these days a new trend has appeared that is known as social media. And now people more and more using this social media to share their ideas, make friends, and for various other activities. In this scenario, social networks are believed to the most attractive social media. At the present, many people use social networks to communicate with their family members and stay in touch with their friends. Though, social media is being used by the majority of people for their personal relationships however it can also by terrorists to communicate their secret messages to their associates. In this scenario, it becomes essential for intelligence agencies to take strict measures to detect such messages. This essay discusses the role of social media as an information source for intelligence exploitation Social Networks: An Overview According to (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), social media based sites or social networks are one of the most attractive web-based applications or tools which individuals/users use to perform the following actions: 1. To create a public or private profile using a bounded system/website 2. Create a list of other users to whom they can stay in touch 3. Keep up-to-date and maintain this friend list as well as make changes using the system features. In this scenario, the basic objective of these social networks is not that they help individuals communicate and make relationships with unknown persons, but, it helps individuals create, maintain, and make identifiable their social networks or profiles. In other words, it can be said that this results in communication with individuals that would not in other ways be possible or done, even though that is not the main goal, since these communications or relationships are usually among "latent ties" the users having some offline links (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Presently, the trend of social networking is growing everywhere and the social networking websites have turned out to be a family name. In spite of the fact that, it is an individual’s private or professional existence, they are in actual fact magnificent procedure for making new relationships online and communicating with friends, colleagues (Sedycias, 2009) because a social networking web site is a kind of website where individuals and groups are able to build up an online profile, after that they enter their interests in the profile, as well as they can add or insert connections to other profiles. In addition, the people using social networking sites are able to distribute/share private information, such as blog entries, photographs and videos. There is an example of social networking website that is MySpace. This social networking website is very famous equally with music groups and individuals, who want to share information about their tour dates, and distribute their songs on their profile pages (Hawkins, 2009). Why do people use Social Media? The concept of social networking has turned out to be itself as the most modern in a line of internet fashions. As well, with the extraordinary and greatest growth in popularity of social networks, it was just a concern of time prior to people got up to the marketable services/opportunities offered. Additionally, the people using the internet in numerous countries are catching the social networking germ. In addition, at the present, the people making use of the world-shattering social networking websites for instance Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and a lot of others are more than 20% of all the internet users in the UK. Moreover, this growth has not gone unnoticed among corporations and businesses. Consequently, numerous corporations and businesses stay occupied by the vision of their marketing / advertising services, products, and goods to the people who keep on growing in numbers at a healthy rate (General Review, 2008). At the present, a number of corporations are making use of the social networking sites in different ways. For instance, they are using them for business revenue generation, customer attraction, marketing, etc. In addition, the services like that MySpace, Friendster, and Connexion have been successfully carrying groups and singles simultaneously based upon resemblance and similar interests. Moreover, at the present, some of the businesses networking services are presenting a parallel experience in the business and professional world. However, some of these services are easily accessible to business people and entrepreneurs and these figures are continuously growing (Allen, 2009; Jenkins, 2006, p. 281). Swartz (2008) stated that businesses more and more are "exploring and experimenting" use of social networks to improve business processes. For example, a business with distant workforce can adopt a social network that facilitates it with sharing tools, collaborate, learning and sharing information from different areas of the world (Swartz, 2009). In this scenario, Liebowitz (2005) has stated that virtual communities’ like that social networks normally offer both (non-profit and profit services) and are able to develop and improve the major economic and social values. In addition, these digital settings augment the resourcefulness as well as facilitate citizens to build up interaction and set up socio-economic forces at elevated standards. For instance, the AOL (Amerce Online) network facilitates in carrying out locally related business, corporate and commerce information as well as augments the characteristics like that local publicity prospects intended for vertical markets (for example real estate, auto, health and employment ). However, with no profit services and economical advantages the social networks and virtual communities are hardly ever attractive. In additional, a lot of non-profit social networks and virtual communities are failing and turned out to be a portal to the city. Similarly with no non-profit services, the city can turn out to be too homogeneous since an outcome of following economic efficiency (Liebowitz, 2005). Moreover, an imperative and unique characteristic of web based social networks is the prospect for valuable data and information distribution down the social associations, that is information broadcast amongst associates in social networks, an individual expects with the passage of time. It is extensively supposed that this type of user-to-user interactions, as well known as “rumor” interactions, is able to increase website material, thoughts, or data extensively and swiftly all through the social network. In this scenario, various researches have suggested viral marketing operations to use the rumor consequence. Additionally, during the year 2007, organizations spent $1.2 billion on publicity through web based social networks globally, and this volume is forecasted to go thrice by the end of 2011. However, to date, there exists less data and information openly accessible over viral marketing in the real-world and too little research work has been done to identify how data and information is distributed on web based social networks (Liebowitz, 2005). From the above discussion we can conclude that the social network websites are becoming a universal reality, in view of the fact that the millions at the present time use the internet to connect with social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter etc.). As well, at the present, there are more than 1.5 billion people from all over the world make use of these social networking sites. Additionally, more than a million people have joined Facebook within three years only in Egypt. In the same way, Tunisia has 279,000 Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, South Africa 1.1 million, Nigeria 220,000, Mauritius 60,000, and Kenya 150,000. Moreover, the people use Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Twitter and this type of other social networking sites which facilitate or present the services to the users/individuals to make a profile page, which they can personalize with pictures, commentary regarding what they are doing, video’s etc. (Kreutz, 2009; Woorld, 2009). And different corporations take benefits of this information to market their products and services. In this scenario, figure1 demonstrates the usage of social networks for a wide variety of tasks along with ratio of users: Figure 1, Impact of Social Networks: Image Source: http://designdamage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dma-headmix-social-networking-biggest-impact-may-2009.jpg Social Media for Intelligence Exploitation Without a doubt, social media is believed to be an excellent tool for completing intelligence activities for the reason that it provides a wide variety of analysis facilities for carry out open-source intelligence in an attempt to collect information. For the intelligence purpose, it is possible to gather information that is available online. The research has shown that the use of social media is necessary in order to compose complex and critical analysis on publicly available data. However, the discovery of these information is subject to their open availability. In other words, open source intelligence techniques are able to extract information only if it was shared by the target by any mean. On the other hand, it cannot extract any information and fact that is not available online (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). In view of the fact that social media such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and any other network contain significant resources and assets of publically available data. As a result, the majority of intelligence agencies always keep an eye on them. In fact, one of the leading intelligence agency “Central Investigation Agency (CIA)” make use of latest tools and technologies for gathering data from a wide variety of social media channels as well as news sources. For this purpose these sites are also known as social media listening platforms. The use of these tools and technologies allows intelligence agencies to access and observe billions of communications as well as develop text analytics based according to predefined standards. In the same way, the use of some cutting-edge listening tools could govern the feeling of the contributors of a conversation in regard to some topic (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). It was 2010 when the United States Department of Homeland Security identified that Mujahideen, Jihadi Groups and terrorists are heavily making use of social media for intelligence purposes. In this scenario, they made use of a well-known social network “Facebook” for communicating their strategic information like that investigation targeting. This investigation also exposed various serious concerns for instance how terrorists were using Facebook to communicate contacts to external fundamental platforms that communicated commands and directions with regards to anonym zing services like that Tor to cover actual identities (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). In fact, the Al-Qaida made extensive usage of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to search for and collect information regarding government officials and secret agents. The basic objective of using social networks was to identify their time tables, interests, addresses and various other personal information. Additionally, they were able to extract this information without significant efforts only by making use of open source social media. In fact, the availability of popular social networking sites offered significant strengths to terrorists all over the world for the reason that social networking sites are an easy to access place for identifying targets’ significant information such as their interest, addresses and so on (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). A study conducted by U.S. Air Force in 2009 revealed that more than 300 out of 500 MySpace profiles created by Air Force personnel were significantly vulnerable to security attacks. Basically, these profiles contained enough information that was necessary for attackers to make target to these personnel. In addition, the results also revealed that more than 60% of personnel revealed too much information. However, because of the vulnerable nature of social networking sites these personnel were given warnings and afterward they were trained to learn about security attacks (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). In addition, intelligence agencies and governments of various other countries such as Russia, USA, and China are enormously participating in monitoring and investigation technology. In fact, NSA has decided to build “Utah Data Center”, which is the biggest spy center. The basic objective of this building is to identify, observe, decipher and understand the world’s communications and data transmissions by making use of all kinds of data transmissions. This center will be established with a budget of more than $2 billion. At the present, the Pentagon is putting considerable efforts to build technologies that it will use spontaneously keep an eye on all social media channels with the purpose of implementing primary warning appliances. Though, the monitoring of social media channels is not a simple task as it will require making use of latest tools and technologies to extract data from a wide variety of sources (Paganini, 2014; Chidester, 2012). Data mining in social media In order to extract knowledge and make effective use of huge data sets intelligence agencies apply a wide variety of data mining tools and techniques. In fact, the use of data mining techniques and applications is essential for social networks in order to demonstrate an applicable share of data distributed over the web. Hence, this quality of social networks make them an excellent source of interest for all kinds of analysis. Through the usage of data mining techniques, the intelligence agencies do not only get raw data for analysis, but it also displays associations between subsets of information, shortening mining operations (Paganini, 2014; Omand, Bartlett, & Miller, 2014). The CIA has already started making use of social media for observing the activities of foreign nationals. The research has shown that the social media provides appropriate and valuable impersonations of the over-all approaches that are used by people in foreign countries. These overall approaches can encompass somewhat which was not easy to explain without making use of social networking sites. According to CIA, the closer monitoring of social media and their users allowed them to determine actions like that the “result from the revolution in Egypt”. Though, this monitoring could not help the CIA determine when and how this revolution will take place however they were able to get an insight of this news. In addition, this message allowed them to identify the situation and incidents happening in the Middle East. On the other hand, the use of social networks for intelligence purposes is not a straightforward task (Chidester, 2012). Intelligent Media Analysis As discussed above, at the present the use of social media especially the social networking sites such as facebook and twitter has increased to a massive extent. In fact, the people who are not common users of the computer and do not possess necessary knowledge are well aware of social networks. On the other hand, the majority of well-known businesses are currently making use of social media for their business purposes. At the present, the Internet has filled with the information especially due to these networks which have populated the entire Internet. This increasing usage of the social media has given birth to a wide variety of disciplines and concerns. For instance, at the present social media based marketing and advertising. In this scenario, there has also emerged a serious trend that is known as social media intelligence exploitation. In this scenario, an automatic analysis is performed on huge data in order to extract useful patterns and information from raw textual, visual or audio data and contents along with linked metadata. Though, this analysis is performed in each kind of media without taking care of nature of contents or source of information. However, it considerably requires taking care of past information, whichever obvious, in the form of knowledge focused mechanisms or implied, in the form of administered learning from training data (Mylonas, Solachidis, Geyer-Schulz, & Hoser, 2009; Schaurer, 2012). In view of the fact that social media consists of a wide variety of media and platforms, which contain data in different formats and forms hence the extraction of useful patterns and information from such varied and huge collection of data is a serious challenge for both scientists and researchers. In this scenario, there is need for high level skills and technologies in order to perform the following tasks (Mylonas, Solachidis, Geyer-Schulz, & Hoser, 2009; Schaurer, 2012): 1. In order to adapt to the varying platforms of awareness and intelligence mechanisms 2. In order to make use of heterogeneity of formless user-generated material and data 3. In order to provide support for interoperability with appropriate information Basically, the exploitation of social media intelligence is performed by extracting data and information from different sources of social media. In this scenario, each platform deals with a specific forms of data. Some of this important types of analyses are outlined below: Text analysis Analysis of textual information is believed to be a significant aspect in almost all situations for the reason that the presentation of information in textual format is a significant aspect of human communication. Humans communication their thoughts and ideas by using text. On the other hand, humans are believed to be more intelligent than machines in the context of language development. In other words, machines are not able to provide automatic support for understanding all the human languages. Basically, the nature of textual information is persistent and the majority of social media platforms contain information in textual formats. In this scenario, there is need for some of the efficient and effective tools and technologies in order to extract these textual information and make use of it for other purposes. For instance, some techniques need to be performed in order to make it capable of integrating without sources and formats. In fact, these textual information is extracted from a wide variety of electronic sources such as spare distributed documents (widely available on the Internet), combining textual information contained by documents with information from the Internet and metadata. In this scenario, it is essential for researchers and computer scientists to look for ways and techniques in order to meet present varying social media requirements. Visual information analysis The processing and analysis of visual information such as videos and images have a tendency to force significant challenges for present social media platforms in the context of broadcast and storage because of their data and size, however its influence on intelligence and knowledge of linked applications is believed to be unimportant. Though, a large number of researches and experiments have been performed in different domains of computing such as computer vision, pattern recognition, image processing have been performed and many are still undergoing for decades however acceptable performance can generally simply be attained in controlled scales, domains and environments (Mylonas, Solachidis, Geyer-Schulz, & Hoser, 2009; Schaurer, 2012). Speech analysis The analysis of speeches is also believed to be a significant aspect of social media intelligence exploitation especially in case of emergencies when because of unavailability of adequate number of resources handled by humans. In this scenario, the need for an automated extraction of semantics turns out to be critical (Mylonas, Solachidis, Geyer-Schulz, & Hoser, 2009; Schaurer, 2012). Challenges in using Social Media for Intelligence Exploitation Though, it brings significant benefits and opportunities for the intelligence agencies however it also raises various issues and concerns for them. In this scenario, intelligence agencies have to face serious challenges in the area of networking for the reason that there are so many regions where there is no availability of communication infrastructure and weak in some areas. Additionally, intelligence agencies also go through serious issues where people use mobile devices for social media. According to CIA, this practice is widely used in less developed countries where terrorists use mobile phones for communication purpose. They use SMS phenomenon in order to transmit secret information from one place to another. In this scenario, these and other similar problems and challenges put significant restrictions each intelligence agency has when observing social media independent of other agencies (Chidester, 2012). Conclusion In conclusion, this essay has discussed the role of social media as an information source for intelligence exploitation. Without a doubt, the use of social media in different forms has reached to a massive extent in the past few years. In this scenario, social networks are the most popular form of social media that is being heavily used by a large number of people. This research shows that social media has become very common among people and people from all fields of life make extensive usage of social media. Additionally, social media has also been used by various terrorists to communicate their messages. In this scenario, various intelligence agencies took serious steps to deal with these situations. It is clear from the research social media is an excellent source of information for intelligence exploitation. References Allen, S. (2009). Leveraging Social Networking Sites to Generate Business. Retrieved 09 25, 2014, from http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/onlinenetworking/a/socnetsites.htm Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Chidester, M. (2012). The Exploitation Of Social Media By Clandestine Groups, How Law Enforcement & Intelligence Can Better Utilize Social Media, And Legal Concerns To Ensure Its Appropriate Use By Government Entities. San Diego State University. General Review. (2008). MySpace or yours? Advertising and social networks. 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