Twitter Sarcasm Detector Bought By Secret Service

There are continual threats of terrorism throughout the world!  People are under attack, governments are under attack and officials are trying to find ways to ensure the continual safety of citizens.  Agencies like the Secret Service, are always trying to find ways to increase the safety of U.S. citizens.

However, with all the information out on the internet, the Secret Service needs to know whether to take threats on social media serious or not without wasting valuable agency time and they aiming to use the new Twitter Analytic Software to do this.  Currently, the agency is using Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Twitter analysis platform.

In a tender posting online, they want to offer a contract for software that has the “ability to detect sarcasm and false positives”.  The software will also be able to collect Twitter posts from the past as well as the emotions of users online.

Spokesman, Ed Donovan, of the Secret Service, underscored that distinguishing sarcasm from real threats will only be one aspect of the proposed software. They want a full Twitter analytics tool.  Donovan continued: “Our objective is to automate our social media monitoring process.  The ability to detect sarcasm and false positives is just one of 16 or 18 things we are looking at.  We are looking for the ability to quantify our social media outreach. We aren’t looking solely to detect sarcasm.”

Proposals for software deals will be accepted by the Secret service until 9^th June.  The plan is for the deal to cover 5 years.  However, is the Agency’s software as up to date as they think?  The tender notice states that the Twitter software must be able to use Internet Explorer 8…That’s so 8 years ago!

So will the secret service be able to accomplish their goal of finding the desired software that detects sarcasm?  Perhaps the best place to look is within British software…We can definitely detect sarcasm!

What do you think? Do you have an opinion on this?  As usual please feel free to leave a comment below.

[Image via idigitaltimes]

SOURCE: http://news.sky.com/story/1275823/secret-service-buying-twitter-sarcasm-detector