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GCHQ recruits maths, physics and computing experts to analyse social networks

By Andrew Barker. Posted November 25, 2012

The Guardian is reporting that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is to trawl social networks for intelligence.

The Cheltenham-based organisation is recruiting maths, physics and computing experts to devise groundbreaking algorithms that will automatically extract information from huge volumes of speech, text and image content gathered “across the full range of modern communications media”.

Read the full article: GCHQ to trawl Facebook and Twitter for intelligence at The Guardian

Previously: Foreign Office gives Bletchley Park £480,000 and announces GCHQ apprenticeships

Declassifying Discoveries by NSA Mathematicians

By Andrew Barker. Posted November 22, 2012

A petition has been raised for the White House to pressure the USA’s National Security Agency to allow unused discoveries to be declassified, and for “gag order” patents to expire after they have served their purpose.

The petition goes as follows:

The NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States. Currently, the discoveries of those mathematicians in their official areas of research, being deemed potentially critical to national security, are indiscriminately classified for an indefinite period, with limited circumstances for declassification.

It is requested the White House press the NSA for an expiration policy for the classification status of non-applied discoveries and instituting an expiration for gag order patents in the interest of furthering American academia and industry advancement and in the interest of crediting the discoveries of our nation’s talented NSA employees.

If you agree with that, you can sign the petition at whitehouse.gov. It currently has just over 1,800 signatures, gathered over a week and a bit.

via BikeMath on Twitter.