Issac Asimov's Harry Seldon used "psycho-history" to predict the future. Tom Cruise used "precogs" in Minority Report. And now a pro-Putin think tank is trying to divine dissident activity by mining social media.

The Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest claims to have developed software that will search Russian social media posts for signs of plans by political opposition to the government to stage unapproved protests or meetings. Described by an Izvestia report as "a system to prevent mass disorder," the software searches through social media posts once every five minutes to catch hints of "unauthorized actions" and potentially alert law enforcement to prevent them.

Public protests, rallies, marches, and meetings staged without government approval are outlawed in Russia—individuals can be fined up to about $600 (30,000 rubles) for participating in such events or sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

The software, which went live on May 18, is named "Laplace's demon" after the theoretical all-seeing intellect that could calculate the future of the universe based on the position and state of all matter. According to the Center's director, Yevgeny Venediktov, the software specifically monitors "politically oriented groups of social protest" at a national level, as well as local discussion platforms for specific geographic areas. "Particular attention will be paid to the number of likes and reposts in extremist groups." Groups and user pages associated with "extremists" are tagged by volunteers, aggregated into a central database, and analyzed and filtered by sociologists and political scientists.

Venediktov told Izvestia that potential users of the system include social scientists, researchers, government officials, and law enforcement agencies. "They will be able to learn about the preparation of unsanctioned rallies long before the information will appear in the media," Venediktov told Izvestia. Alerts about impending unapproved political action will be sent out to users in the field via a mobile application.

Currently, the software monitors user pages and groups on Facebook and Vkontakte; a Twitter extension for the system is planned by September. Twitter is a particular priority because, as Venediktov said, "We conducted a survey and found out that it is precisely this social network [that] is not only the leader among social media on the number of hosted links to extremist content, but also does not remove them at the request of Roskomnadzor (Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications)."