The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) plans to create an application that would allow it to better mine social media content, in an attempt to more accurately identify, target and fight threats in real-time. According to a Request for Information (RFI) posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website, the FBI is conductiong a market research to determine the capability of the industry to provide an open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application solution. According to the RFI document, the application solution should be a secure web portal, using mash-up technology. It must have the ability to assemble critical open source information and intelligence "that will allow FBI to quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging treats." The web application will be able to scan both social networking and open source sites using search parameters and keywords defined by the FBI.

The information gathered from news and social media outlets would be overlaid onto a digital map, pinpointing the location of the "breaking events," along with all other relevant contextual data. Additional information, including US domestic terror data, worldwide terror data, the location of all US embassies, consulates and military installations, weather conditions and forecasts, and traffic video feeds, would also be overlaid on the map.

It is surprising to see that the FBI doesn?t already have such an application at their disposal. However, the FBI asks for further analysis of the data, which would lead to predicting future events or a possible crisis.

"Social media will be critical to meeting the intelligence objectives stated above because it provides unique access to communications about the special event [i.e. political conventions, national holidays, or sporting events] in advance of its occurrence," reads the RFI.

So is Big Brother Actually real?