The Department of Homeland Security is launching a strategy to gather and analyze data from social media posts to predict and prevent the next Jan. 6.
And while some might be concerned that this might pose a bit of a civil rights problem, never fear — they’re only after “emerging narratives and grievances,” not actual people, as NBC News reports.
Interestingly, there is no mention in NBC’s report on the DHS program of anything other than Jan. 6, not, you know, just to pick a totally random example, “grievances” over police brutality or, say, capitalism circulating on social media and how this may contribute to real-world violence.
Nope, apparently, the only time in the last 4-8 years that “emerging narratives and grievances” have resulted in acts of domestic terrorism was Jan. 6, 2021. (Oh, and Charlottesville.)
Anywho, the DHS’ ultimate goal is “to build a warning system to detect the sort of posts that appeared to predict an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 but were missed or ignored by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the officials said,” as NBC News explains.
“We’re not looking at who are the individual posters,” a senior official involved in the new strategy told the outlet. “We are looking at what narratives are resonating and spreading across platforms. From there you may be able to determine what are the potential targets you need to protect.”
