Media: bnd wants to probe social networks live

The federal intelligence service (BND) is increasingly targeting social networks. According to information from "suddeutscher zeitung", NDR and WDR, the german foreign intelligence service wants to be able to investigate twitter, facebook and co in real time in the future. The plans emerged from several confidential documents of the BND, the media reported on friday evening.
According to the information, the BND bases its surveillance programs on the technical capabilities of the controversial US intelligence service NSA and the british GCHQ. The project is being run internally under the title "real-time analysis of streaming data".
Already this year, the foreign intelligence service wants to improve its technology in such a way that weblogs, forums and portals such as flickr, facebook and twitter can be systematically analyzed, according to the "suddeutsche zeitung". This should make it possible, for example, to immediately incorporate moods in the population of other countries into BND images.