The Pentagon's secret pre-crime program to know your thoughts, predict your future -- INSURGE intelligence

The US Department of Defense (DoD) wants contractors to mine your social media posts to develop new ways for the US government to infer what you're really thinking and feeling -- and to predict what you'll do next. Pentagon documents released over the last few months identify ongoing classified research in this area that the federal government plans to expand, by investing millions more dollars. The unclassified documents, which call on external scientists, institutions and companies to submit proposals for research projects, not only catalogue how far US military capabilities have come, but also reveal the Pentagon's goals: building the US intelligence community's capacity to forecast population behavior at home and abroad, especially groups involved in political activism. They throw light on the extent to which the Pentagon's classified pre-crime R&D has advanced, and how the US military intends to deploy it in operations around the world. A new Funding Opportunity Announcement document issued by the DoD's Office of Naval Research (ONR) calls for research proposals on how mining social media can provide insight on people's real thoughts, emotions and beliefs, and thereby facilitate predictions of behavior.