WASHINGTON: Hey, all you folks who like to plaster all the details of your daily lives on YouTube, did you know that your videos could soon be scanned and evaluated for terror threats? Yes, thanks to a new project funded by the US intelligence community, they soon hope to create a searchable warehouse of open-source clips.
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, is behind the program called Automated Low-Level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video (ALADDIN).
The advent of cell phone cams and online video hubs means thousands of clips are uploaded every day.
America's spy services have become increasingly interested in mining "open source intelligence" — information that's publicly available, but often hidden in the daily avalanche of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports.
Until now, uploaded videos contain such diverse scenes and situations, not to mention grainy images and sound, that it's much harder to prep algorithms for automated evaluation. And human analysts only have so much time for the "eyes-on-video/ears-on-audio" routine.
Despite the challenge of analyzing uploaded videos, spy agencies appear to be already doing it. In 2008, the chief of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Open Source Center noted that "YouTube ... carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence".
But now, both the CIA and Google are said to be backing a company that monitors the Web in real time — and uses that information to predict the future.
Using data from websites and social networks, the company creates dossiers on people that may be key to intelligence officials. Their algorithms were allegedly able to prove Hezbollah was in possession of long-range missiles using a backlog of statements from the group's leader.
Arab News
