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Facebook for spooks

CHICAGO: As spy gear goes, a social-networking Website does not quite have the same cachet as some of James Bond’s high-tech gadgets.

But the U.S. intelligence community is taking a page from popular online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace to help encourage operatives to share information. In December, agency leaders are launching a social-networking site just for spooks.

The classified ‘A-Space’ ultimately will grow to include blogs, searchable databases, libraries of reports, collaborative word processing and other tools to help analysts quickly trade, update and edit information.

It comes on the heels of the year-old Intellipedia, a Website modelled after the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Intellipedia has been gaining traction among the intelligence agencies and already has nearly 30,000 posted articles and 4,800 edits added every workday.

Although A-Space will be built with commercially available software, organisers are quick to dismiss any criticism about security, saying all sensitive data will be stored behind a thicket of classified safeguards that they are developing themselves.

The social-networking efforts, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are emerging as the U.S. intelligence community comes under renewed criticism for a lack of cooperation and communication — something a new internal CIA report said contributed to the information breakdown before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Aside from simply being able to share documents back and forth, experts who are in the same field but work for different agencies could meet each other virtually and swap ideas and information directly. Experts say the current procedures for sharing information is so cumbersome that such communication is now impossible.

“It’s just a better way to build and grow that network so that improved analysis can come out the other end,” said Robert Cardillo, deputy director of analysis for the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency.

Organisers acknowledge it may be difficult to erase generations of territorial tendencies and prevent spats among the 16 intelligence agencies in the U.S., which often want credit for their own discoveries. But they hope the influx of younger operatives — half the intelligence analysts employed by the U.S. Government have been on the job for no more than five years — will help shelve old feuds and embrace Web tools already in widespread use.

“It’s a way to build the social network for all analysts,” said Mike Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology, who is leading the initiative. “We put more eyes on more problems.”

Development of the $5 million project began in June, and a pilot version will be available in December, with features to be added over the next year. Ultimately, the system may grow to include an unclassified network for use by state and local law enforcement and even some foreign agencies.

Classified information will only be available to individuals with the right security clearance. — AP

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