Open Source Spying

eldavojohn writes "The New York Times is running a very lengthy but amazingly interesting article on the short history of open source software and information on the inside of the intelligence community. The article discusses the transformation of the intelligence community from fighting the Cold War with traditional information exchange to fighting terrorism today utilizing things like wikis & blogs. From the end of the article, 'Today's spies exist in an age of constant information exchange, in which everyday citizens swap news, dial up satellite pictures of their houses and collaborate on distant Web sites with strangers. As John Arquilla told me, if the spies do not join the rest of the world, they risk growing to resemble the rigid, unchanging bureaucracy that they once confronted during the cold war. "Fifteen years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union," he said. "Who knew it would be replicated today in the intelligence community?"' You may recall that the CIA now has their own classified Wiki. I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."

Comments

Movie OS is a lie?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I hope I don't have to repeat myself.

THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

"Yeah, our systems are like old and stuff. Boy we sure aren't very technically adept at all. We couldn't monitor all phone calls in the world and automatically flag some for futher investigation. Nosiree. We're just some bumpkins who fell off the turnip truck near the guardpost at Langley. What's a cumpooter?"

Re:Movie OS is a lie?

[dbIII]

There's a big difference between a Tom Clancy fantasy and reality. These agencies are nowhere near as competant as the conspiracy theorists think - I'll guess that after a long list of dramatic failures the agencies of other nations will not trust US intelligence unless it is verified from another source. There's even loonies that think polygraph tests and torture work to find out if people are telling the truth at the top of some of those agencies. The famous link between Saddam and Bin Laden shown to the world - ravings of a drowing man who knew barely anything about the organisation he hadn't been in for long.

Re:Movie OS is a lie?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

If you are weak, let your enemies think you are strong, for they will be afraid to attack. If you are strong, let your enemies think you are weak, for they will attack the ground of your choosing. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Re:Movie OS is a lie?

[TubeSteak]

The only problem with Sun Tzu's words is that "your enemies" are not always easily distinguishable from "citizens of your country who have done nothing wrong".

Which is exactly the issue that intelligence agencies are dealing with.

Re:Movie OS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

These agencies are nowhere near as competant as the conspiracy theorists think

Having been a full-time employee at the NSA, I can say that these agencies are nowhere near as competent as Hollywood often thinks, much less what the conspiracy theorists think.

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...

Back then

[El Lobo]

Back in the cold war times, secret services agencies had hundred of peoples reading ad analyzing every number of the must important publications in the world, searching for clues and disguised information. I guess the same can be applied now for the web, with the advantage that it's a lot easier to search the web and classify information using database filters than it was back then.

DoD Using OSS

[Derlum]

I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that.

Very interesting, but certainly not surprising. Tools such as Wikis and blogs have exploded in popularity with the private sector because they are easy to use and more efficient than available alternatives (if any exist). It makes perfect sense that government agencies would be looking to harness those same advantages that have worked to the benefit of the public at large.

I think one of the most interesting things to me in my limited dealings with unclassified DoD communications contracting is that these government entities do not have an aversion to or ignorance of the available OSS technologies. On the contrary, they frequently have a strong desire to use these tools, but they're waiting for budget money to contract someone to tell them how to use it properly and securely. Unfortunately they often end up waiting far longer than they should.

Re:It makes you wonder

[arun_s]

RTFA please! The title is a bit misleading, the article is not one bit about open source software. Its about having a more 'open' online presence within its branches, such as through the use of blogs and wikis. The blogs example particularly has a good case for it: the example of google using links to rank the importances of pages is given, compared to the mess of unsortable data the government previously seemed to be having.

Re:It makes you wonder

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I most certainly do not want the NSA to have any software at all.

Then realistically, you're going to have to stop developing not only open source software, but any software at all.

This is the flip side of "information wants to be free" -- once it is free, it's really free. Proprietary, open source, whatever; once the bits are out there, they're not going back. Microsoft cannot stop people from using Word to write documents critical of Microsoft, or Visual Studio to develop software that competes with Microsoft's offerings. The NSA cannot stop people from using SE Linux to securely store, process, and transmit information that might be detrimental to the US. China cannot stop its citizens from reading web sites which contain content the government doesn't like; neither can Iran. And you, once you write a piece of software that might somehow be useful to some spook in some three-letter agency, and release that software into the wild, have absolutely no control over what happens afterwards.