Could New Software Help Cops Track Social Media?

Nationwide, police departments are using predictive analytics to strategically deploy officers around their respective cities. A mobile app for citizens in Baltimore called SpotAgent, for instance, predicts whether a given parking spot might be safe from roaming parking enforcement officers at a given hour. And since 2006, Memphis, Tenn, has used the technology to evaluate incident patterns citywide and forecast criminal hot spots. But security firm Raytheon is taking predictive analytics to the next level. While current technology, such as IBM’s predictive analytics solution, uses statistics and analytical data to predict criminal activity, Raytheon’s Rapid Information Overlay Technology (RIOT) software monitors public information on social media websites to predict what people will do next.