CIA, FBI Push Social Networking for Spies

node7 writes "The FBI, NSA, and CIA are jointly supporting a newly created 'MySpace' for the intelligence community. Named 'A-Space,' the site will contain highly classified material, so naturally, it won't be available to the public. From CNN: '[Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis] demonstrated the program to CNN to show how analysts will use it to collaborate. "One perfect example is if Osama bin Laden comes out with a new video. How is that video obtained? Where are the very sensitive secret sources we may have to put into a context that's not apparent to the rest of the world?" Wertheimer said. "In the past, whoever captured that video or captured information about the video kept it in-house. It's highly classified because it has so very short a shelf life. That information is considered critical to our understanding."'"

Comments

High Value Target or Honeypot

[sehlat]

This will go one of two ways: it will either be the highest-value target for enemy spy agencies in history ("Your enemy's information, delivered" to paraphrase AT&T) or it will end up as a nothing-really-here honeypot.

Re:Hacker Target

[Nursie]

It's always cute when people have such faith in their government/military/intelligence institutions.

In the real world, they do take a bit more care than most, but somebody will screw up sooner or later.

Re:Hacker Target

[IanHurst]

Yeah, leaks still happen. But the parent is basically right. Access to these systems in the real world tends to be limited to (1) people who really are supposed to get it or (2) people doing state-level espionage.

If getting in was even a little easier than that, we'd have a lot more information than we do.

Honeypot

[Weaselmancer]

Maybe it's just because I'm a sick bastard, but I'd leave a single access point open to this network on the internet. Protect the living hell out of it, so only the leet could get in. And then make it a honeypot, not connecting to anything real.

But instead hosting video of alien autopsies, fake Apollo moon landing movie sets, documents about how the CIA shot JFK, letters from the Bavarian Illuminati ordering the war in Iraq...stuff like that.