Via Wired:

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

There's been a lot of material that's been beyond parody in the New Yorker lately, but I think this one takes a big slice of Marie Antoinette's cake. Appallingly, the editors have actually devised a department heading for this sort of story: "Team Obama"*

Last week, members of the steering committee for Generation Obama—a grassroots group that organizes young professionals—held an after-work meeting in a conference room at a marketing firm on Third Avenue. The theme was reaching out.

Good, good...