A Glimpse At Raytheon's Terrifying People-Tracking Software

Translation? Don't use social networking if you want a more private life. (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Google+, and whatever else is out there) I certainly would never post where I'm going, or going to be on the internet. That's just plain stupidity.

Jesus, I *hope* the technology has progressed since that video. Everything there can be accomplished via publicly accessible APIs. If you post something on a social media site, it and its metadata can and will be made available to everyone else in the world.

Get checkins for a FourSquare user. Plot the coordinates of those checkins on a map. Sort those checkins by day. Sort them by time of day. Scan a user's tweets and Facebook posts for things resembling phone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses. Get a list of the users's photos from Instagram or Flickr and map plot their coordinates on a map. Run the images through facial recognition software to scan for contact with known suspects. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Not a bit of that is hard to do if you have someone in mind that you want to intrude upon. It's all possible (aside from *maybe* the facial recognition) with the resources of a lone, hobbyist coder.

TL;DR - If you don't want to get tracked by this kind of software, don't post things on websites.

This is just absolutely creepy and twisted...

So what? If this dweeb knows I was in Podunk, Idaho last week, so what?

I'm not going to lose sleep over this, and I'm not going to stop using my iPhone.

Dweebs will be dweebs.

I guess if I were a criminal who also liked to tweet and check-in and post pictures from my phone, I'd have something to worry about.

But I'm not a criminal and I feel somewhat protected by my anonymity. What are the techno-dweebs of this world going to do, follow everybody?

If you spend your time following everybody, you are, essentially, following nobody.

You might as well just stand on a street corner and yell at passersby, "ahh ha! I see you!"

I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do,
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Why do people care about this type of stuff and drones so much? And do not say any of that Big Brother type crap, read 1984 and you will realize we aren't even close. The government doesn't really care about you b*tching about how a movie sucks or a pic taken with your girlfriend. People need to get over themselves and not worry about this kind of stuff. Look at it this way, the government already has ways to know everything about the common person and doesn't give two sh*ts already, why would they invest millions to make a pointless job easier?

@Him: It doesn't matter that we're not close yet. All of this stuff adds to the arsenal of tools that will allow someone to take our liberty away if they so choose. Hitler didn't gas the Jews the moment he got into office. He had to take small steps that most people dismissed as harmless. Each step helped make it legal and socially acceptable for him to commit genocide.

In the hands of a 100% benevolent government, this is harmless. There is no such thing as a benevolent government. Government is like fire. It is very useful and beneficial when it's under control. When it is uncontrolled and uncontained, it is one of the most deadly and destructive forces on Earth.

Obama's not Hitler and neither was Bush, but one day, we will have our Hitler in power. Do you really want this as one of his tools?

kangdawei your comment is surprising! The reason I say this is, even if you trust the government, do you not think a criminal could plan a flawless robber knowing where you are at all times. What if a nut case uses this, the police come after the crimes happen, not before. Lately the police despite their best efforts have not been able to stop the violent crimes. Just something to think about kangdawei.