US plans software to track global press

The department says it will spend 2.4 million dollars over the next three years supporting research at three US universities using computer science to analyze human language in texts.

"The work is really designed to get information extraction that would help the DHS review statements for sentiments or beliefs contained in statements, and to provide intelligence analysts within DHS," said Homeland Security spokesperson Christophe Kelly.

Kelly said the software would offer the department staff "another resource to conduct their work" -- even though the project has raised eyebrows among press freedom advocates.

Janyce Wiebe of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who will direct the research project, said that the funding will go towards basic research and not any monitoring of the global press.

The research will seek to "develop accurate and robust techniques for extracting and summarizing information about events and opinions described in a text," Wiebe said.

Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Utah will also participate in the work, in a field computer scientists call "natural language processing."

"Their focus is to develop simpler, more efficient software, algorithms and mathematical architectures for use in a broad range of computing applications," Kelly at the DHS said.