Spy Agency Invests in Technology to Help Identify Insider Threats

One of the nation's spy agencies is investing in "sentiment analysis" technology to help identify and flush out insider threats, Defense One reports.

The technology's planned use by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will analyze text and then categorize its writer's sentiment as positive, negative or neutral.

NGA will award a one-year pilot to WT Government Services for its product that uses the technology, according to a notice on FedBizOpps.

WT Government Services is the only vendor who can modify its configuration, the posting said — and its contract with NGA calls for anyone working on the project to have a top secret security clearance.

If the technology works, the spy agency would "conduct a full and open competition for future support," the posting states.

According to Defense One, the agency first approached use of the technology earlier this summer, collecting information on how it could be used to measure how effective its public relations efforts are in raising the agency's profile with recruits, college students and private industry.

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