Campaigners described it as the greatest challenge to civil liberties and digital freedom of our age

bristol | corporations | news report Monday February 11, 2013 16:31 by Protester

Ok I'll admit to cut and pasting some of this article because I think it important that the word is spread.

As some of Bindy's readers will recall there was a concerted effort to have Raytheon kicked out of Bristol because of their atrocious human rights record.

E.g. the manufacture and sale of internationally outlawed cluster bombs that do not discriminate against civilians (none combatants) and soldiers. Even after conflicts have moved on cluster bombs continue to maim and kill.

More often than not children.

Hence Raytheon became a legitimate target for protest including roof top occupations lasting many weeks and through hazardous icy conditions after no local MPs would come forward to discuss these issues of concern.

So, Raytheon were shown to be the arms manufacturing bastards that they are.

Now they are aiming their sights at those deemed to be a threat. And with Raytheon's appalling record who knows what lengths they will go to and how much lower they will sink in their pursuit of financial gain?

'Criminals who pose a threat to national security could be caught before they have even committed an offence with software used to track their online behaviour, it is claimed.

Their future movements can be predicted by ‘mining’ vast amounts of information from social media websites including Facebook and Twitter.

After a few clicks, a detailed picture of their life, including information about their friends, can be built and used to predict where they might be in future and who with.

Campaigners described it as ‘the greatest challenge to civil liberties and digital freedom of our age’.

The ‘extreme-scale analytics’ program – called Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – has been created by Raytheon.

The US-based group, the world’s fifth largest defence contractor, said the software had not yet been sold to any clients.

However, it was shared with the US government as part of a joint research effort in 2010 to help build a national security system capable of analysing ‘trillions of entities’ from cyberspace.'