For folks who are not aware, there are like a dozen commercial products that already do this.
If you sign on with Cision, for example, you can pull an up-to-date list of reporters in any U.S. market, filtered by beat, outlet, channel, topic, etc., and send an email to all of them by pushing a button. Then you can click over to the monitoring dashboard and pull media stats by reporter, keyword, channel, etc. Can't remember if Cision does sentiment but I know a lot of others do.
This story is being reported and commented like "DHS seeks to create new tech capability." The reality is more like "DHS seeks to choose an agency who will use commercial OTS products to help DHS do something that any major brand has been doing for years already."
For folks who are not aware, there is a huge difference between a private company doing something and a government doing something. Government is the institution of violent enforcement, making them much more powerful and potentially dangerous than a PR consulting firm.
That's only true as long as corporations remain relatively small in power. There has been a definite trend in consolidation of power amongst the larger corporations and if it continues there won't be much practical difference between them or the government
You should also be aware that U.S. governments routinely acquire data from third-parties to circumvent constraints in place that prevent them from doing so, directly.
They also sell their own data, when not constrained against doing so. The many state budget crises have apparently exacerbated motivations to do so.
All that said, I can't view this DHS initiative as a positive development, WRT domestic monitoring.
Actually, I can see the point of passive monitoring. And I can't help but believe it's already done. The difference here may be the DHS, specifically, and the public nature -- announcing the initiative. Therefore perhaps also who will have access to the resulting system or systems.
Maybe I'm biased by my news consumption habits, but I worry about politicizing and agendas, when the DHS is involved.
If you sign on with Cision, for example, you can pull an up-to-date list of reporters in any U.S. market, filtered by beat, outlet, channel, topic, etc., and send an email to all of them by pushing a button. Then you can click over to the monitoring dashboard and pull media stats by reporter, keyword, channel, etc. Can't remember if Cision does sentiment but I know a lot of others do.
This story is being reported and commented like "DHS seeks to create new tech capability." The reality is more like "DHS seeks to choose an agency who will use commercial OTS products to help DHS do something that any major brand has been doing for years already."