Juha sez, "If you're going to build a protest movement, it might be better to stay off Facebook and Twitter because the cops are fully tuned into social media these days.

The Open Source Intelligence Unit at London's Metropolitan Police Service has a staff of seventeen who work seven days a week – to track social media feed back and to monitor community tension.

Having a sense of humour and understanding of slang gives humans the edge over social media surveillance software, UK cops reckon.

The British cops are worried about 4G mobile broadband though because it'll generate much more data such as video."

The unit monitored some 32 million social media articles during the Olympics, with 10,300 tweets being posted every second during the opening ceremony. "Companies will tell your that sentiment analysis from a piece of software is about 56 percent accurate … we would say it's lower, because it doesn't pick up humour or slang," Ertogral said. In addition to looking at trends, he said the unit was also exploring association to establish influencers, particularly for protest movements. "So we're trying to build friend lists on Facebook, who's connected to who, who are the influencers out there etc."



Police tap social media in wake of London attack [Charis Palmer/IT News]

(Thanks, Juha!)