Josh Marshall points out that US taxpayers are now funding a new program at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The 3-year program will be called "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information". Essentially, the Department of Defense will be monitoring Blogs:
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism.
Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc., Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for the 3-year project …“It can be challenging for information analysts to tell what’s important in blogs unless you analyze patterns,” Ulicny said.
Here is the surprising part: the DoD believes that Blogs contain a great deal of "actionable information":
One of the problems analysts may have with blog monitoring, Ulicny noted, is there is too much actionable information for the analyst to properly analyze.
Come to think of it, I’ve often felt that Extrablog has a great deal of actionable information and should be monitored closely. But in any case, the Department of Defense could have spared US taxpayers a great deal of money if it simply used Google Blog Search and Blogpulse like everyone does.
