June 6, 2014

The CIA Finally Joins Twitter, After Years of Mining it for Intel


The Central Intelligence Agency—which only recently kicked its nasty habit of torturing detainees for little or no actionable intelligence and overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments—is now officially on Twitter. The agency’s account is verified. On Friday, @CIA sent its first tweet, which reads as follows (warning—dorky spy humor ahead):

“Just remember: This is a messaging arm of a spy agency, not a silly channel for CIA Internet jokes,” PolicyMic‘s Jared Keller wrote on Friday.

The CIA finally joined the Twitterverse after years of mining it for intel. Analysts at the agency’s Open Source Center (who other agents jokingly refer to as “vengeful librarians“) sift through millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and other public data to get a sense of the collective attitudes of groups and regions overseas. The “librarians” track up to five million tweets a day. “Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the center’s director, Doug Naquin,” according to an Associated Press exclusive report in November 2011.

Nowadays, the State Department is actively trolling terrorists on Twitter. Let’s see if the CIA can top that.

UPDATE, July 7, 2014, 5:14 p.m. ET:

smdh.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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