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From Humanitarian-FOSS Project Development Site

Some notes and questions on Clive Thompson's NY Times Magazine article on Open Source Spying.

• Matthew Burton, 22 at the time, was disappointed the Defense Intelligence Agency's Intelink had not adopted the latest open communication and information-sharing culture of the internet and the blogsphere.

• The problem: Search engines were inferior, personnel directories inadequate, instant messaging and chat groups were divided by agency. No blogs were used.

• 9/11 Commission acknowledged the failure to "connect the dots" problem.

• Web 2.0 information-sharing blogs, Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc were not being adopted by our intelligence agencies.

• Cold war mentality: Intelligence analysts wrote long-range compartmentalized analyses about slow-moving threats. Big walls between different agencies (partly because of U.S. law).

• Technology: computer systems were "air gapped"--no interagency communication. FBI and CIA couldn't communicate easily (FAX).

• In 2004, Director of National Intelligence established and General Dale Meyerrose appointed as CIO.

• "Need to know" culture of secrecy. Interagency communication only through the top. Intelink (1994) postings had to be approved at the top.

• Challenges range from information hording to information overload.

• Galileo Award competition for best essays on information sharing. How did the Internet get so good at helping people find information?

• Calvin Andrus (CIA): The growth of self-publishing--i.e., millions of people coming online to publish stuff on blogs and wikipedia. This leads to a "cascade effect" as others link to certain information.

• Google's link analysis could be used to cull information, allowing patterns to become evident.

• Result: Intellipedia experiment used to produce National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria.

• Big question: Is it possible to reconcile secrecy with open information sharing?

• Problems: Protecting sources, moles, blogs and wikis may be inimical to keeping secrets. "Social software doesn't work if people aren't social."

• Intellipedia channels: Top secret, secret, unclassified?

• Wisdom of crowds: will millions of amateurs be smarter than a few experts?

• Cultural inertia: New agents and the directors are enthusiastic about open source spying, while the middle "iron majors" remain skeptical and reluctant.