First it was phone calls, then emails and now blogs are being tracked by the goverment according to MarketingPilgrim’s Andy Beal.   I’m not surprised.

It seems that big business are not the only ones interested in tracking online blogs, the CIA has launched an initiative to track the blogosphere.

As OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin told The Washington Times, "A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else."

Some corporations also track blogs and I’m familar with what products being used for that purpose.  I imagine what the CIA has developed is probably an offshoot of one of these programs (ie: BrandPulse, WebFountain, etc).