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CIA Details Its Wikipedia-Like Tools For Analysts
hhavensteincw writes "If you think selling Web 2.0 in your organization is hard, some early backers of a Wikipedia-like project at the Central Intelligence Agency were called traitors and told they 'would get someone killed' by their efforts. But Intellipedia — the CIA's version of Wikipedia — now is so heavily used by analysts that the agency is using it in its security briefings, according to two of the CIA employees who work on the project. Intellipedia has been expanded since it was first launched so that now it boasts its own YouTube-like channel for video and Flickr-like photo sharing as well as a wiki where workers can debate different intel information."
I don't see how this will improve the accuracy of the information. It will just help poor intel get passed more efficiently.
Having a collaborative tool that makes it easier to keep profiles up to date is better.
The CIA also doesn't have to worry about vandalism- no one is going to blank a page and replace it to the word "penis" when every edit is tied to their name... plus, being in the CIA is serious work, so I'd imagine the maturity level is higher anyways.
I'm sure it's still on a need-to-know basis. The article states that anyone with access to certain networks can read the wiki, but there is authorization involved with making edits. I'm also sure that their wiki follows their pre-existing rules about who can access what information, they're not going to suddenly dump a lot of top-secret information into a wiki that everyone has access to.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
If nobody knows the intelligence information, and nobody can put together a full picture, well then it is useless. For example while hindsight is always 20/20, it still looks as though the government had all the information to put together what was going to happen on 9/11. The problem was, there wasn't a good way of accessing and analyzing it. It wasn't like there was a report saying "Terrorists will hit the towers on this day," it was little fragments all over. Well, all those little fragments ended up doing no good. Nobody was ever able to put it together, and thus there was no warning that would have allowed prevention.
Had there been efficient dissemination of the information, it is possible some analyst would have put it all together and then been able to generate a report that would be acted on.
This is not exposed to teh intertubes my man. It runs on the CIA's internal secure network. It just happens to use Wikimedia as the engine.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Chill. First off MediaWiki is open-source so if you are so paranoid just look up the source code. If we are on the topic of security whats to say that the CIA hasn't already broken many encryption schemes used today? It is a lot more probable that the CIA has busted encryption algorithms then it is that they are injecting backdoors to open-source projects.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Oh, no... you don't ever mix your rags with your linens. Simple principle of espionage, been around since the world began.
An agent, especially a covert one, needs to have a very clear sense of moral superiority over both enemies and his own sources/helpers (aka collaborators, spies, traitors, freelancers, what have you). If (s)he doesn't, (s)he might turn, be turned, or just abandon the game in disgust.
The guy making that comment has (or affects) zero notion of field work.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Better to let the chinese hackers figure it out and keep it to themselves...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.