(2006-12-04) Nytimes Rewiring The Spy

Clive Thompson (Ny Times) on "Rewiring the Spy", efforts to use Social Software to increase knowledge sharing within the Intelligence Community.

• has only passing reference to Open Source Intelligence concept. The Unclassified Intelli Pedia will have the biggest readership and thus will grow the most rapidly; but if it's devoice of any truly sensitive secrets, will it be of any use? Thomas Fingar says yes, for an interesting reason: Top Secret information is becoming less useful than it used to be.

• no mention of idea of using Idea Futures to evaluate theories. The grass roots, they've found, are good at collecting threats but not necessarily good at analyzing them.

• notes Civil Liberty issues of greater info passing across agencies (Posse Comitatus vs Total Information Awareness and the Transparent Society).