Just between you, me and...Visible Technologies

Surely you didn't think social media was just for reconnecting with your high school crush or updating people about what kind of syrup you put on your waffle this morning, did you?

There must be another use for Facebook other than playing Mafia Wars and telling the world which Michael Jackson song you are and doesn't blogspot have a greater function than as a space to celebrate your cat's new holiday outfit?

Of course it does!

Check out this segment from yesterday's Democracy Now! (again, yes, I know...) in which WIRED reporter Noah Shachtman describes how the CIA's investment arm In-Q-Tel is investing in technologies that can crawl across half a million websites a day, tracking blogs, online forums, and postings on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.

Shachtman lays it out very clearly in this column for WIRED magazine's national security section Danger Room and what he says is pretty compelling and, I suppose, a bit terrifying.

Again, for all you busy executives who need to get back to the serious business of hiding your bailout bonuses-- the Executive Summary: In short, the CIA's In-Q-Tel uses a company called Visible Technologies to read, rank and record what you post online.

"The way Visible works is it kind of grabs all the blogs and all the tweets out there, then it sorts for certain key words, it sorts for a sentiment about whether things are positive or negative."

"Well, duhh!" you say-- tell me something I didn't know. Maybe you are one of those conspiracy theory nuts who thinks that the Agency has a mic in your Fruit Loops and cameras in your sock drawer. But why would they? Who gives a rat's nut about your drunken frat boy days or if you're ticked off because your neighbor's boyfriend is sleeping with your sister's teacher?

Bo-ring!

But (there's always a but) what if you are up to something subversive or salacious or downright nefarious? Suppose you just took a really bitchin' class on how to convert fertilizer into, err... something else, and you uploaded it to YouTube? Or what if you just posted a book review for the newly published 2nd edition of "How To Dwell in a Cave in Southern Waziristan and Not Be Found" (only two stars-- lacked forward thrust, photos blurry)?

Would that be enough to catch the unblinking eye of the ever-helpful people at Visible Technologies?

If so, that might make you think twice about posting a tweet that read "just saw that new Osama bin laden vid on CNN- it was da bomb!" or uploading a picture of you and your friends getting jiggy during your Spring Break in Peshawar.

In fact, there are a whole host of buzz words you might feel a slight inclination to avoid using, especially if it means you are going to attract unwanted attention.

In his WIRED article, Shachtman writes that currently Facebook remains untouched by Visible Technology monitoring. At the end of the article, however, he quotes a former senior technology officer from the Defense Intelligence Agency as saying that if the intelligence community ignored the "tsunami of real-time information" coming from FB or non-English Twitter clone sites, it would be called incompetent.

So next time you tweet someone's blog, remember, there is no such thing as invisibility.