New Scientist magazine reveals that the National Security Agency is funding research into how to add information from social networking site MySpace listings to profiles of individuals garnered from banking, retail and property records. As detailed in a footnote to a paper entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organization known as ARDA, which stands for Advanced Research Development Activity. Published in January by the Congressional Research Service, a report named Data Mining and Homeland Security, noted that part of ARDA’s role is to promote integration of heretofore format-incompatible data sets about people- data sets that could be combined to generate more complete profiles of individuals under suspicion for potential terrorist links. To facilitate this integration, research is believed to be underway on Ressource Description Framework, a way of tagging data in a way that will promote more common uniformity with other data. ‘By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons,’ writes article author […]