No, really. The United States Secret Service is looking to purchase software that is able to detect sarcasm on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The goal is to be able to "detect sarcasm" and language uses that may not mean exactly what they appear. But already, reports have poked fun at the agency, telling readers this is "no joke."
With surveillance being an increasingly controversial topic of late, including the spying on American citizens, the idea that the Secret Service is looking to use sarcasm technology in a monitoring manner could have many worried that all their communications are being watched.
Now the hard part will be in finding a device, or computer, able to detect those linguistic differences that humans use when employing sarcasm. Many are worried that the agency is attempting to increase its surveillance on online networks, where they have the ability to arrest anyone for posting alleged threats.
"It does appear that it's going to be a pretty broad monitoring program. It will likely sweep in some First Amendment protected expression," said Ginger McCall, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), in an interview with the Washington Post.
"It is troubling, because it really stifles people's ability to freely express themselves, and it has a tendency to quell dissent, to make people think twice before they express themselves online."
According to nextgov.com, the site that first published the news, the agency is currently accepting submissions and will close those off next week.
Secret Service spokesperson Ed Donovan pointed out that the goal of the request is to allow the agency to better monitor the micro-blogging site Twitter. Such software would allow them to create an internal tracking system. Detecting sarcasm would be a small but important feature to help discern a real threat from a false one.
"Our objective is to automate our social-media monitoring process," Donovan said. "Twitter is what we analyze. This is real-time stream analysis. The ability to detect sarcasm and false positives is just one of 16 or 18 things we are looking at."
Government agencies often track the happenings on social media networks. The Secret Service has a vested interest in protecting the White House and uses its surveillance of social media as a means of finding potential threats. The agency can arrest any individual it deems poses a threat to the country through any writings that individual has done.
The new tracking system, with sarcasm detector, would help this process. And they aren't joking.
