Ever heard of Raptor X, a specialized computer tool that when used with a privately developed plug-in called "Social Bubble" can display the geographic location of Twitter users and their posted Tweets? In addition, Raptor could potentially capture related commercial entities and even financial transactions.
The government created Raptor X. The Special Operations Command's National Capital Region (SOCOM NCR) organization, located in the Washington area, used it to data-mine social media as part of the 2012 Project Quantum Leap experiments.
The project's purpose was to identify "strategies and techniques for exploiting open sources of information, particularly social media in support of a counter threat finance mission."