A wink is as good as a nod to social media except when it comes to the U.S. Secret Service.
Yes, the US Secret Service is seeking a Twitter sarcasm detector.
The agency is looking for a software system to analyze social media data – especially when it comes to determining whether or not a threat against President Obama is legit or not.
The BBC reported that software should have, among other things, the "ability to detect sarcasm and false positives".
A spokesman for the Secret Service said it currently used the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Twitter analytics and needed its own, adding: "We aren't looking solely to detect sarcasm."
The Washington Post quoted Ed Donovan as saying: "Our objective is to automate our social media monitoring process. 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."
Specific requirements include "audience and geographic segmentation" and analyzing "sentiment and trend".
The app must have have "compatibility with Internet Explorer 8" despite the fact that that browser was released more than five years ago.
Despite the fact that IE8 may seem old and busted down America’s enemies are probably not using state of the art sarcasm generators being mostly desert weaned old school threat masters.
Terrorists rarely use smiley faces in the kind of chatter that makes Claire Danes’ “Homeland” character cuckoo for conspiracies.
In the offering, the Secret Service does not detail the purpose of the analysis but says its mission includes "preserving the integrity of the economy and protecting national leaders and visiting heads of state and government" AND must be able to detect whether seeming threatening social media is legit – or NOT.
