Google, CIA invest in Future of web monitoring

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time - and says it uses that information to predict the future. Recorded Future scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents - both present and still-to-come. Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened ("spatial and temporal analysis") and the tone of the document ("sentiment analysis"). Then it applies some artificial-intelligence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. (article) Noah Schactman, "Google, CIA invest in Future of web monitoring," July 28, 2010

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/