CIA scours blogs for useful intelligence

[ECH1969]

In a bow to the rise of Internet-era secrets hidden in plain view, the agency has started hosting Web logs with the latest information on topics including North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's public visit to a military installation -- his 38th this year -- and the Burmese media's silence on a ministry reshuffling. It even has a blog on blogs, dedicated to cracking the code of what useful information can be gleaned from the rapidly expanding milieu of online journals and weird electronic memorabilia warehoused on the Net.

The blogs are posted on an unclassified, government-wide Web site, part of a rechristened CIA office for monitoring, translating and analyzing publicly available information called the DNI Open Source Center. The center, which officially started this month under the aegis of the new director for national intelligence, marks the latest wave of reorganization to come out of the recommendations of several commissions that analyzed the failures of intelligence collection related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Even before the Open Source Center's debut, the office had retooled its Internet efforts earlier this year. It added a new video database that makes all its archives available online, and it rolled out an upgraded Web site with the blogs and homepages for key intelligence topics, such as Osama bin Laden, Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, China and even avian flu.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-aintelblogs11dec11,0,5337566.story?coll=sfla-news-nationworld

[soothsayer]

1. My favorite part of the article:

<snip>
Two men in the back of the class came up to the instructor after the presentation. Where, they asked, did he get a particular image from Iraq? It's classified, they insisted. The former analyst laughed. He had taken it from a gruesome Web site that compiles terrorist atrocity videos along with pornography.
<snip>

A day late and a dollar short, these master spies are.

[lvx35]

2. Good for them

Its good to see them looking in appropriate places for good information, maybe they can send a memo to the FBI, and tell them stop looking at my library books for a minute and see what people are saying online!!! :)

[rodeodance]

4. they are most likely getting an earful (or eyeful)!! te he.

.....see what people are saying online!!! :)

[lvx35]

13. Yeah, no kidding, but its a good thing.

Open sources are a good thing. I think the CIA should be really active in things like open standards and even open source software, stuff that allows for a high degree of transparacy in daily life, stuff that allows lots of good information to be available not just for them, but for everybody. This is the only way to have lots of high quality intelligence and NOT be all KGB about it. And I don't buy the crap about "Al Queda would also have lots of intelligence too" if there was more available info: the fact remains that the majority of people are not Al Queda, and it would allow everybody to be active in security...Its like the way open source software is secure, or very good cryptography algorithms are openly published. Peer review assures their strength, so with security in a transparent society.
Plus being active in this sort of thing might people think of something other than "torture", "penis laceration" and "secret detention" when they think of where their tax dollars are going! :)

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Wish J.F.K. had lived long enough to obliterate your covert asses

theres a traitor running the country , Getem

[spooked911]

5. Open source info seems just as reliable as that gotten by spying

if not more so. I was wondering if the CIA was checking blogs, actually.

I wonder if they put out any propoaganda blogs....

[DBoon]

6. Ah, to get paid for surfing the Web

what a job!

[Toots]

7. Hi Agent Mike

:hi:

[Ptah]

12. The Pause of Mr. Claus

<snip>
And that's why tonight I'd like to dedicate it to every FBI
man in the audience. I know you can't say nothin', you know,
you can't get up and say "Hi!" cause then everybody knows
that you're an FBI man and that's a drag for you and your
friends.

They're not really your friends, are they? I mean, so you can't
get up and say nothin' 'cause other wise, you gotta get sent
back to the factory and that's a drag for you and it's an
expense for the government, and that's a drag for you.
<snip>

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/pause-claus.shtml

[leQ]

8. is there some reason they didn't post the urls to those webs? (eom)

[rhett o rick]

9. Just in case they are reading...there are no WMD's in Iraq. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. LOL!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Here ya go, CIA guys

Here's a terrorist you can go after!
http://www.billoreilly.com/

[VegasWolf]

14. Actually, I believe that some well intentioned CIA guys would love to

see Bush out of office. Bush's constant finger pointing has to get pretty tiresome after awhile!

:toast:

[The Sushi Bandit]

15. I get all my intellegence at: sushibandit.blogspot.com!

they should look their first!