Users of social media websites inside and outside the United States could have their lives fully tracked by new software developed by defense contractor Raytheon.

Riot (short for Rapid Information Overlay Technology) can use Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social networking sites to determine a person’s movement and predict their future behavior.

Among the useful tools exploited by Riot are the encoding of latitude and longitude embedded in photos taken by Smartphones and GPS locations posted on Foursquare.

Raytheon told The Guardian that it has not sold Riot to any clients yet. But the fifth largest defense firm in the world has received approval from the U.S. government to export the software. Put in the hands of dictatorships, Riot could become what some have dubbed the “Google for spies” and others have characterized as “stalking technology.”

The company reportedly shared the technology with federal and industry officials while working on a joint R&D project in 2010 to develop “a national security system capable of analyzing ‘trillions of entities’ from cyberspace,” according to the British newspaper.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

To Learn More:

Software That Tracks People On Social Media Created By Defence Firm (by Ryan Gallagher, The Guardian)

How Raytheon Software Tracks You Online - Video (The Guardian)