New spyware Riot tracks your behaviour on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare to predict crime - is it an invasion of privacy?
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Your support makes all the difference.Remember how futuristic Minority Report seemed?
The 2002 film with Tom Cruise showed a world where police could arrest murderers before they'd even committed a crime.
Now, just over a decade on, and new software has been developed which tracks online behaviour. It claims to build a picture of someone's life - and predict their future movements.
The ‘extreme-scale analytics’ program – called Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – has been created by Raytheon, the tech company specialising in defence and national security.
Riot uses Twitter and Facebook data and sifts GPS information from Foursquare, the mobile phone app with 25 million + users which alerts friends of their whereabouts.
Campaigners described it as “the greatest challenge to civil liberties and digital freedom of our age”.
Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch said:
“People have been sharing large information about themselves on social networks without knowing the consequences of it. Now companies are looking at how to join the dots.”
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