PressEthic

It’s not everyday that a New York Times article reads more like a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream than a statement of fact. So after coming across the piece, I knew I had to blog about it. The article begins:

“A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a “sentiment analysis” is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.”

Not surprisingly:

“Even the basic research has raised concern among journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media.”

I find this project disturbing for so many reasons. (And I’m not even a conspiracy theorist.) Foremost in my mind is the question of what the United States will actually do with the information they track.

According to an Oct. 5 Nation blog:

“This administration actively tries to alienate everyone through its words and actions and then it wants to measure just how much they've offended everyone? You couldn't make this stuff up.”

The article states this new software will make it easier for public officials “to track events and opinions here and abroad.” Yet coming from an administration that appears to prefer secrecy to free speech, and has been none too friendly to the press, I find this hard to believe. Is this just a way for the administration to label critical journalists abroad as terrorists? Are we going to cut their country’s aid or come after them?

“Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information.

'That is really chilling,' Mr. Rotenberg said. 'And it seems far afield from the mission of homeland security.'

Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said. But there would be no such restrictions on using foreign news media, Mr. Kelly said."

This whole project just sounds a little too shady for my liking. Especially when it’s illegal to monitor American journalists, but it’s ok to monitor foreign ones.