Last week, civil libertarians cried foul when press reports revealed that, in its efforts to ferret out terrorists, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting cell phone records and Internet data from companies such as Verizon, Facebook, and Skype. Some argued that the federal government is spying on its own citizens. From the nature of the data, scientists say it's clear that NSA is performing network analysis, a type of science that aims to identify social groups from the connections among people. And NSA is hardly the only organization doing such work, researchers say. Private companies are already tracing people's social circles.
Network Science at Center of Surveillance Dispute
Science 14 June 2013:
Vol. 340 no. 6138 p. 1272
Via Complexity Digest