Information Society Watch

October 4, 2006, Eric Lipton, The New York Times

The United States Department of Homeland Security has granted over $2 million to finance a three year research project by a consortium of universities to develop “sentiment analysis” software. This software is intended for government monitoring of negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. It is hoped that such tracking would help to identify potential threats to national security. Understandably, even the preliminary research undertaken for this project has journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media, strongly voicing their concerns. While Federal law prohibits the government from compiling such information on American citizens, foreign news media is exempt from any restrictions, and this is the key issue under contention.

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