From an ordinary computer, a Raytheon system can monitor television broadcasts from all over the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- and instantly translate and analyze them.

It’s amazing technology, stuff deployed operationally since 2004 by the Department of Defense for a variety of purposes, including open-source intelligence, information operations, public affairs and PsyOps.

Available through the General Services Administration, it does not require any hardware setup, software installation, or onsite administration or maintenance.

Could it have anticipated the escalating negative sentiment towards Americans linked to the foreign media coverage of the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims” -- and perhaps helped protect U.S. embassies and interests abroad?

Raytheon’s BBN Broadcast Monitoring System automatically captures foreign media and deploys state of the art technology to translate, transcribe and analyze those video and audio streams in real time. It can spare a human some of the tedious and time consuming work by automatically sifting through the vast volume of foreign language news.