Remember Edward Snowden, the NSA
leaker that exposed how phone & internet companies including the government
are using our data to spy on us? Well, it appears that the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab announced a new tool that uses your
Gmail metadata to build a visual map of the web you've created with others. The
tool, called Immersion, has been
gaining national attention.
Immersion is a visualization of the
social webs we create when we send and receive emails. In light of the uproar
that Edward Snowden created, Immersion gives ordinary individuals a glimpse at
how our email data and cell phone data can be used by government analysts to build
a profile on us by visualizing the people we make the most contact with.
According to the tool, the more
frequent email contacts are represented by a large bubble. The less frequent
contact are represented by smaller bubbles. Bubbles that are connected with
lines represent networks. Nevertheless, an analyst can quickly discern a target’s
social affiliation.
Please note that you must have a gmail account in order to use the tool.
