#15 - Speaking of Web 2.0 - Spy World

I found a fascinating article in the NY Times about the intelligence community re-examining its techniques following 9/11. They are taking note of Web 2.0

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html?_r=2&fta=y&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Some bits and pieces of the article follow:

".... control over the flow of information, as the 9/11 Commission noted in its final report, was a crucial reason American intelligence agencies failed to prevent those attacks. All the clues were there — Al Qaeda associates studying aviation in Arizona, the flight student Zacarias Moussaoui arrested in Minnesota, surveillance of a Qaeda plotting session in Malaysia — but none of the agents knew about the existence of the other evidence.....

“Web 2.0” technologies that encourage people to share information — blogs, photo-posting sites like Flickr or the reader-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia — often made it easier to collaborate with others......

Could blogs and wikis prevent the next 9/11?

........major spy agencies divided up the world: the F.B.I. analyzed domestic crime, the C.I.A. collected intelligence internationally and military spy agencies, like the National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, evaluated threats to the national defense. If an analyst requested information from another agency, that request traveled through elaborate formal channels. The walls between the agencies were partly a matter of law. The charters of the C.I.A. and the defense intelligence agencies prohibited them from spying on American citizens, under the logic that the intrusive tactics needed to investigate foreign threats would violate constitutional rights if applied at home. ...."

These agencies are trying to resolve the conflict between secret information and open sharing...
But the power of 2.0 is prompting alot of consideration.

AND.....another article speaking more specifically about 2.0 applications....http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/weekinreview/02shane.html