Pentagon steps up special ops monitoring of social media sites

‘U.S. military special operations forces are elite commandos who are sent on high-risk, high-reward missions all over the world, on a regular basis. As such, they have increasingly turned to a method of open-source intelligence collection that is becoming vital to the success of their missions: The monitoring of social media and other Internet-based outlets that can provide crucial information and data.

“Social media is another component of unconventional strategies, and the security environment in general, that is playing a central role in recruiting individuals to causes,” Army Gen. Joseph L.Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said in prepared testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in recent days.’

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