Washington: The US Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time.
According to a report in CBS, the agency asked for analytics software that can watch users in real time, collecting a range of data including “emotions of Internet users to old Twitter messages” across multiple languages.
The Secret Service is seeking software that can complete very succinct tasks within massive sets of continuously flowing social media data, such as locating users and detecting sarcasm. “Ability to detect sarcasm and false positives,” reads the request, according to CBS
“We are trying to procure a tool that can automate the social media monitoring process; synthesising large sets of social media data,” CBS News quoted spokesman Brian Leary as saying.
The Washington Post reported the Secret Service was reacting to a 2009 incident in which people were trapped in a Capitol tunnel and were unable to reach the security gates. If the Secret Service had known through real-time social media, they could have reacted more quickly.
