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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."
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.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
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
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!