Fergie's Tech Blog

Pentagon Studies Blogs as Terror-Fighting Tool

Rory O'Conner writes on AlterNet:

The Defense Department is seeking to create a powerful and sophisticated new weapon to help win the Global War on Terror -- a blog search engine. "We're out to make a machine that will analyze blogs in real-time," says Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, a senior scientist for the defense contractor charged with development of the new terror-fighting tool.

Can blogs really help "information analysts and warfighters" combat terrorism? The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is betting nearly half a million dollars that the answer is "Sir, Yes Sir!"

The money will go to a Massachusetts firm called Versatile Information Systems Inc., to pay for a 3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."

In plainer English, that translates into the creation of a "topic-specific blog search and analytic tool that will apply novel metrics" to analyze links and patterns within the blogosphere, according to Ulicny. Those patterns include the content of blogs as well as hyperlinks contained within them. "The focus will be on those that are part of the national security and foreign relations domain," Ulicny explains. "After all, the Air Force is not particularly interested in blog postings about Lindsay Lohan.

posted by Fergie @ 7/19/2006 01:13:00 PM