9/26/2011 - The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs

The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs Posted: 25 Sep 2011 04:36 PM PDT The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it.  In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.  This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact.  As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution".  In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are.  Obviously, any "positive" feelings about the Fed would not be a problem.  What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively.  It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign. You can read this "Request for Proposal" right here.  Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes.... "The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal ("RFP") was created in an effort to support FRBNY's Social Media Listening Platforms initiative." A system like this is not cheap.  Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important.  In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet.  It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it. "Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.  They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.  They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document." The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on "billions of conversations" and to actually determine the "sentiment" of those that are participating in those conversations. Of course it will be those conversations that are "negative" about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells. "Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers" Uh oh.  So they plan to "identify" key bloggers and influencers? What exactly do they plan to do once they "identify" them? "The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube." Hopefully you understand this already, but nothing posted on the Internet is ever anonymous.  Everything on the Internet is gathered by a vast host of organizations and is used for a wide variety of purposes.  Data mining has become a billion dollar industry, and it is only going to keep growing. You may think that you are "anonymous" when you criticize organizations like the Fed, but the truth is that if you are loud enough they will see it and they will make a record of it. "The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations.  It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics." Why do they need to perform "sentiment analysis"? If someone is identified as being overly "negative" about the Fed, what will they do about it? "The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger." This sounds very much like the kind of "keyword" intelligence gathering systems that are currently in use by major governments around the globe. Very, very creepy stuff. Are you disturbed yet? For those of us that write about the Federal Reserve a lot, this is very sobering news. I wonder what the Fed will think about the following articles that I have posted on this site.... *Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant: The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once Again *Celebrating Independence Yet Enslaved To Debt *19 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is At The Heart Of Our Economic Problems *Is Ben Bernanke A Liar, A Lunatic Or Is He Just Completely And Totally Incompetent? *10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created What is their "Social Media Monitoring Solution" going to think about those articles? Unfortunately, this is all part of a very disturbing trend. Recently, a very creepy website known as "Attack Watch" was launched to gather information on those saying "negative" things about Barack Obama. Suddenly, everyone seems obsessed with what you and I are saying. This just shows how the power of the alternative media is growing. Not only that, but it seems as though the government also wants to gather as much information on all of us as possible. For example, a new rule is being proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would force health insurance companies to submit detailed health care information about all of their customers to the federal government. Every single day our privacy is being stripped away a little bit more. But now it is often not just enough for them to know what we are doing and saying.  Instead, the "authorities" are increasingly stepping in to silence important voices. One of the most recent examples of this was when Activistpost was taken down by Google.  We are still awaiting word on why this was done. Sadly, the silencing of Activistpost is far from an isolated incident. Hordes of YouTube accounts have been shut down for their political viewpoints. Quite a few very prominent alternative media websites have been censored or attacked because of what they stand for. So why is this happening?  Well, it turns out that the power of the alternative media is growing.  According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, 43 percent of Americans say that they get their news on national and international issues from the Internet.  Back in 1999, that figure was sitting at just 6 percent. The American people are sick and tired of getting "canned news", and they are increasingly turning to the Internet in a search for the truth. As I have written about previously, the mainstream media in this country is overwhelmingly dominated by just 6 very powerful corporations.... Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations.  These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day.  They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest.  Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media.  But they should.  The truth is that each of us isdeeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media.  The average American watches 153 hours of television a month.  In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something.  Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year. The "news" that we get from various mainstream sources seems to always be so similar.  It is as if nearly all mainstream news organizations are reading from the same script.  The American people know that they are not getting the whole truth and they have been increasingly looking to alternative sources. The monopoly over the news that the mainstream media once possessed has been broken.  The alternative media is now creating some huge problems for organizations that were once very closely protected by the mainstream media. The American people are starting to wake up and they are starting to get very upset about a lot of the corruption that has been going on in our society. But it turns out that the "authorities" don't like it too much when Americans try to actually exercise free speech in America today.  For example, you can see recent video of female protesters in New York City being penned in by police and then brutally maced right here. Are you sickened by that? You should be. What the "authorities" want is for us to shut up, sit in our homes and act as if nothing wrong is happening. Meanwhile, they seem determined to watch us more closely than ever. So are you going to be afraid to talk negatively about the Federal Reserve now that you know that they are going to be watching what you say on the Internet?