How tweeters tell the CIA exactly what’s going on in the world

At the agency’s Open Source Centre, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news, radio stations, internet chat rooms – anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

From Arabic to Mandarin, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the information is gathered by the analysts. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Middle East nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the centre’s director, Doug Naquin.

The CIA facility was set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, with its first priority to focus on counter- terrorism and counter-proliferation. But its several hundred analysts – the actual number is classified – track a broad range, from Chinese internet access to the mood on the street in Pakistan.

While most are based in Virginia, the analysts are also scattered throughout US embassies worldwide.

The most successful analysts, Mr Naquin said, “know how to find stuff other people don’t know exists”.

The centre had started focusing on social media after watching the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009, when thousands protested against the results of the elections that put Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power.

“The Farsi language was the third largest presence in social media blogs at the time,” Mr Naquin said.

The analysis ends up in President Barack Obama’s daily intelligence briefing in one form or another, almost every day.

After Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May, the CIA followed Twitter to give the White House a snapshot of world public opinion.

Since tweets can’t necessarily be pegged to a geographic location, the analysts broke down reaction by languages. The result: the majority of tweets in Urdu, the language of Pakistan, and Chinese tweets, were negative. China is a close ally of Pakistan’s. Pakistani officials protested the raid as an affront to their nation’s sovereignty, a sore point that continues to cloud US-Pakistani relations.

The centre is also in the process of comparing its social media results with the track record of polling organisations, trying to see which produces more accurate predictions, Mr Naquin said.

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter also have become a key resource for following a fast-moving crisis such as the riots that raged across Bangkok in April and May of last year, the centre’s deputy director said. He cannot be identified, as he still works undercover in foreign countries. As director, Mr Naquin is identified publicly by the agency, although the location of the center is kept secret to deter attacks, whether physical or electronic.