The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a contractor to help it build a new “app” to gather up-to-the-minute information from Internet social networks. The project is not as simple as it sounds, however.

The FBI first wants to analyze the information that is disseminated publicly and openly on all the various social networks – and it doesn’t matter if one is talking about Twitter, Facebook or any other network – and to use it as a general tool to detect various security problems before they occur in practice.

The agency plans to help its agents find information by building a system of selected keywords and phrases that will cause an alert to appear as soon as one shows up in any of the social networks being followed by the agent.

The information collected by the researchers can be displayed as overlays on a map which can be attached to previously saved information on the agency’s office computers.

The FBI has issued a request for bids by potential contractors who would like to be involved in the project, and who are asked to contact the Bureau until February 10.