The software mines images posted on social networking sites such as Facebook (Picture: AFP/Getty)

Criminals who pose a threat to national security could be caught before they have even committed an offence with software used to track their online behaviour, it is claimed.

Their future movements can be predicted by ‘mining’ vast amounts of information from social media websites including Facebook and Twitter.

After a few clicks, a detailed picture of their life, including information about their friends, can be built and used to predict where they might be in future and who with.

Campaigners described it as ‘the greatest challenge to civil liberties and digital freedom of our age’.


The ‘extreme-scale analytics’ program – called Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – has been created by Raytheon.



The US-based group, the world’s fifth largest defence contractor, said the software had not yet been sold to any clients.

However, it was shared with the US government as part of a joint research effort in 2010 to help build a national security system capable of analysing ‘trillions of entities’ from cyberspace.

Information posted on Twitter could also be used by the software (Picture: AFP/Getty)

Brian Urch, Raytheon’s ‘principal investigator’, explains in a video obtained by the Guardian that images posted by users on social networks can contain location details automatically embedded by smartphones.

Riot uses this information to reveal where the photographs were taken.

It also mines Twitter and Facebook data and sifts GPS information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25million people to alert friends of their whereabouts.

Mining from public websites for law enforcement is considered legal in most countries.

However, Nick Pickles, of Big Brother Watch, said the technology raised concerns about how data could be collected without being regulated.

He added: ‘This reinforces how privacy has been undermined online.

‘People have been sharing large information about themselves on social networks without knowing the consequences of it. Now companies are looking at how to join the dots.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the government and companies in Britain are looking at using it.’

Raytheon, which generated sales estimated at £16billion last year, said it did not want its demonstration video to be publicised on grounds of product confidentiality.

A spokesman added that Riot’s ‘innovative privacy features are the most robust that we’re aware of’.