Showing that there is no end to what the Obama administration will
spy on, the Environmental Protection Agency has developed a plan to
chart the flu by mining the social website Twitter for tweets on
diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and the bug.
The agency is shopping for a company
that can search for those terms and several others to determine how
many people in the country are suffering from “acute gastroenteritis
infections,” or AGI, and where the hot spots are. The agency wants to
compare the tweet results with figures from the Centers for Disease
Control.
“The following example search terms are considered evidence of AGI:
Stomach flu, stomach bug, stomach ache, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea,”
said the EPA’s notice to contractors just posted.
Explaining the plan, EPA said: “The vendor will use these terms and
attributes to obtain Twitter messages that will be evaluated by U.S. EPA
human health specialists to determine if they are indicative of AGI.
The number of tweets from each search will be verified by the vendor and
in-house U.S. EPA human health specialists. In-house statistical
analysis will be performed to determine if the tweets correlate with
epidemiological data from the CDC.”
(Click link below to read more)
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- Judy Chaffee
- This site is the inspiration of a former reporter/photographer for one of New England's largest daily newspapers and for various magazines. The intent is to direct readers to interesting political articles, and we urge you to visit the source sites. Any comments may be noted on site or directed to KarisChaf at gmail.
Friday, January 24, 2014
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