The rise of social media brought forth a new form of surveillance which is used to create social maps and behavioral patterns for individuals based on the data gathered from all social media platforms, phone call records such as those in the NSA call database, and internet traffic data gathered under CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act).
Today, a large percent of U.S. government agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network surveillance and analysis.
The 21st century social zeitgeist depicts the biggest threats to governments around the world to come from decentralized, radical, extremist, leaderless and geographically dispersed groups. These types of threats are most easily neutralized by locating and eliminating essential infrastructure or nodes within the target network, and to accomplish this, the creation of a detailed social network map is mandatory.
The purpose of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program (SSNA) developed by the Information Awareness Office (IAO), which in turn was established by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to leverage and analyse the data uploaded to all social media platforms and networks in order to assist with distinguishing potential terrorist organizations from other, benign groups of people.
