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The U.S. military has been investigating the use of sophisticated data mining tools to probe social media and other open sources in order to support military operations against money laundering, drug trafficking, terrorism and other threats.  But the window for doing so may be closing as the social media landscape changes, according to an internal assessment. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) National Capital Region (NCR) conducted a series of experiments over the past year under the rubric “QUANTUM LEAP” that was intended to test “non-traditional” tools and techniques to advance the SOCOM mission. An after-action report on the first experiment said it “was successful in identifying strategies and techniques for exploiting open sources of information, particularly social media, in support of a counter threat finance mission.”  Counter threat finance refers to efforts to disrupt an adversary’s finances.  A copy of the SOCOM NCR report was obtained by Secrecy News.  See “Project QUANTUM LEAP: After Action Report,” 12 September 2012. “Major lessons learned were the pronounced utility of social media in exploiting human networks, including networks in which individual members actively seek to limit their exposure to the internet and social media…,” the report said.

The report said that as valuable as the opportunity created by new techniques for data mining of open sources appears to be, it may prove to be transient. “We are currently in a ‘window’ of opportunity for exploitation of social media sources for application to CTF [counter threat finance] or other SOCOM NCR missions. This window could be as narrow as 18-24 months before the social media phenomenon transforms. This future transformation is unknown and could offer additional opportunities, or existing opportunities could be closed, but the only thing that is certain is that there will continue to be rapid change.”