As marketers and media look to extract information from consumers using social media, U.S. intelligence agencies are the next to move in on the new media, Information Week reported yesterday.

"In-Q-Tel, the investment firm established by the CIA to support U.S. intelligence agencies, has invested in Visible Technologies, a start-up that monitors social media content on the Web," the article stated. If government gets into the social media mix, will that cause consumers to turn away, worried about privacy, thus hindering targeted marketing efforts by media?

Visible Technologies' software is used by companies to monitor and manage brands "by observing and analysing public opinion on the Web in real time," Information Week reported, noting that Microsoft, Xerox and Panasonic are all customers.

While this is not the only tool government uses to monitor communication online, Times Live reported that it does lead to the question: Why monitor open communication channels?

According to the Telegraph, the technology is designed to monitor Web sites, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, as well as reader habits on sites like Amazon.com.

Although the CIA is legally barred from domestic spying, that hasn't stopped the agency from finding loopholes and creatively bypassing the law, PC World's David Worthington pointed out. Meanwhile, the move raises other privacy concerns, the Worthington states:

"The advent of cloud computing raises more concern, because services store data among data centers all around the world. I recently wrote a detailed report about how laws that safeguard your privacy are not the same in every country. If messages pass through a server overseas, does that give the CIA the right to browse the content even if a user is a U.S. citizen?"