Northrop Grumman OSI Exploitation program collects data form website, blogs, and various social media, including Twitter, to understand and help make predictions about the activities of criminal and terrorist networks. OSI Exploitation extracts out and correlates information about people, organizations and places, and allows it to be exported to link analysis program. Currently, the company is collecting information from approximately 300 websites. One example of the type of activities the program looks at is drug cartels in Mexico. Though currently an internal research and development project, Northrop Grumman has applied for funding under the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity Open Source Indicators program.
Source(s): Sharon Weinberger interview