Courtesy of JD Lasica, this article from The Washington Times on how the CIA has launched a new open source center that monitors blogs in its efforts to keep track of foreign intelligence. (Note: I believe this is the first occasion I’ve had in many, many years to quote The Washington Times.)
The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin. “A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.
That’s not my favorite part. As a result of its blog monitoring, the CIA now delivers more information to the President than ever before.
“I can’t get into detail of what, but I’ll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president’s daily brief has gone up rather significantly,” Mr. Jardines [Eliot Jardines who has the great title of “assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source”] said. “There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we’ve been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community.”
Lasica’s reaction to this
Chill out, my lefty friends, this can only be a good thing. Nobody’s invading any foreign country here based on faulty, outdated, third-hand intelligence.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:38 AM|Comments(0)
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