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Law enforcement agencies are looking for ways to mine social media to look for threats, but those speaking at a conference on Wednesday suggested that an equally important issue might be trying to control authorities who are causing problems by their use of Twitter, Facebook and other such applications.

Those public safety groups that have started trying to tap social media to do their jobs haven't yet figured out how to sift through the massive amounts of data they collect, said speakers at the Microsoft Public Safety Symposium, held at the software giant's Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

For instance, in preparation for the Rugby World Cup, New Zealand police set up a system that scrapes YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, plotting the message, photo and video uploads on a map. Hovering over an icon with a mouse let an officer see the tweet, photo or still image from the video.

Officers could filter results to look for items posted from homes of known "folks who want to take out your mum," said Neil Macrae, senior sergeant with the New Zealand Police.

The system offered time stamps for when the tweets were made with a high granularity for where they were issued, he said. YouTube had the least accurate location information, he said.

But over the six weeks of the World Cup, the system collected 20 million tweets. "You need to start with a target. With 20 million tweets, it's pretty hard to scroll through," he said.

One person the authorities appeared to target was an "ambassador from a prominent country" who was tweeting his location after a match. Macrae didn't say which country the ambassador was from but implied the U.S. by noting that the game happened to occur on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York. "It was a bit of a security risk that he was doing that. His security detail was a bit apprehensive when we alerted them," Macrae said.

Matching location with social media information can be both a blessing and a curse. There is an acceptance that geolocation can be a positive aspect of social media, but for people in mission-critical roles, it can backfire, said Tim Pippard, director of defense, security and risk consulting for IHS Consulting.

For instance, in 2007 soldiers in Iraq took photos of a new fleet of Apache helicopters that just arrived. Adversaries in Iraq found the photos online and were able to discover the location. A month later, the base, which had been at a secret location, was bombed, he said.

Just last week the U.S. Army released a directive warning personnel about the potential danger in geotagging photos.

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Public safety sees opportunity, pitfalls in social media

Social networking is one of the most inclusive and accessible forms of media on the planet. People from any country can be linked with one another and directly communicate free of charge, writes Logan Park High School student Micaiah Derrett.

There is no doubt that this fairly recent technological development has the potential to be of great benefit to human rights' causes the world over, in terms of global awareness and support gathering.

My main concern regarding this strange and contemporary phenomenon of groups, personalities and fan pages is its potential to be abused or misused.

For the purposes of making this article relatable to the common reader, I am going to use the example of Joseph Kony, and the viral video calling for knowledge of his atrocious actions, that has recently swept the earth in a matter of days.

Joseph Kony is the leader of a rebel Ugandan guerrilla outfit known as the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). He has had his arrest called for by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, and is accused of kidnapping Ugandan children and forcing them into his militia, or into the sex trade.

He is alleged to have forced some of these children to kill their own parents. A charity group called Invisible Children released a documentary style video to the world exposing Kony and the LRA to millions of people over Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

In this video the leaders of Invisible Children call for the public to appeal to the government for United States military intervention in Uganda to assist the Ugandan army with new technologies and methods that are necessary in order to catch Kony.

At a glance, this seems like a just and entirely reasonable cause to people such as myself with relatively limited knowledge of the situation in Uganda. However, what scares me is the fact that in the video Invisible Children provide no references to their statistics concerning the numbers of people killed by the LRA.

As well as this lack of evidence concerning the main purpose of the video, it is also deceptively selective in terms of what information it uses to inform the viewer. There are multiple graphic images of the mutilated faces of the LRA's victims, but no mention of the injustices conducted by the Ugandan military whose support they condone. This seems to me to be a deliberate misuse of the power of social networking.

I will not hesitate in saying that Joseph Kony is a despicable human being, but I would never in my most wild and fantastical dreams consider supporting a military regime, monetarily or otherwise, that is responsible for the "wilful killing of citizens, torture and mistreatment and arbitrary detention..."-(www.hrw.org) such as the UPDF (Ugandan People's Defence Force).

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The dangers of social network-based political action

14-03-2012 09:19 Have you ever wondered if one day, cold, hard cash, will simply cease to exist? As more transactions are carried out via credit, online or on your smart phone, paper money and coins have become an inconvenience. David Wolman, author of the "The End of Money" went one year without using cash, with a few exceptions; he joins the show to discuss. Twitter: twitter.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

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Are We Moving Towards a Cashless Society? - Video

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Digital Money Chain Letter(s) - Video

By Tim Baysinger -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/14/2012 6:32:07 PM

Marc Pritchard, head of advertising for Proctor & Gamble, is looking to slash money from his company's marketing budget by leaning heavily on digital marketing, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The report states that the consumer giant aims to save $10 billion by 2016, cutting $1 billion from its marketing budget. According to Pritchard, those cuts will come by thinning the ranks of marketing executives and spending more efficiently, for example by focusing more on lower-cost digital marketing and easing up somewhat on pricey broadcast ads, the report states.

Pritchard, in an interview with WSJ, said that less expensive digital advertising can be more creative than more expensive TV ads, and that he would like to see all of the company's brands embrace the strategy. He said that Pampers, Old Spice and Secret are farthest along, the report states.

Pritchard also said he wants P&G to craft campaigns for multiple brands around the same event, such as the upcoming 2012 Olympics this summer, the story said. He told the Journal that he has over 30 brands doing Olympic activities and consumers should expect to see "heavy-duty" digital activity for their Olympics program, which will include Twitter, Google, YouTube and Yahoo.

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P&G's Pritchard Looks to Market in Digital Space