The multi billion dollar company, didn't want its concept video revealed, but the Guardian posted it anyway. Raytheon has not yet sold RIOT to any clients but has been shared with the US government as part of a joint research project to develop a Big Data system capable of surveilling large parts of the population.
The software can also pull metadata from pictures taken to pinpoint a user's location when the picture was taken. From this and other location data taken from applications i.e Foursquare, the software can predict future movements of users.
The video shows how Riot works on a sample Raytheon staff member, tracking his regular visits to Washington Nationals Park and a local gym. RIOT creates unique profiles from publicly available data, including details like your friends, and where you've been and at what time. A spider diagram even tracks his relationships with other people online.
Since most content published to social networks is already publicly available, RIOT's ability to scan this information might not sound like such a big deal. "Social networking sites are often not transparent about what information is shared and how it is shared," Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Privacy organisations have warned that users will have to reevaluate privacy settings on social networks to avoid themselves from being targetted in online searches by others.
