[Infowarrior] - US launches Œ MySpace for spies ¹

[Richard Forno]

US launches ŒMySpace for spies¹

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

Published: August 21 2007 20:29 | Last updated: August 21 2007 20:29

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e2648ea-5014-11dc-a6b0-0000779fd2ac.html

Spies and teenagers normally have little in common but that is about to
change as America¹s intelligence agencies prepare to launch ³A-Space², an
internal communications tool modelled on the popular social networking
sites, Facebook and MySpace.

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire
intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an
ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to
detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis,
believes the common workspace ­ a kind of ³MySpace for analysts² ­ will
generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally
stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help
process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is
limited.

³Burying the same number of analysts in ever higher piles of hay would no
more increase the number of needles,² says Mr Fingar.

Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence
Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national
clandestine service. The move sparked concerns that the CIA was monitoring
members, which the agency denies.

²Earlier this year, the CIA used Facebook - an excellent peer-to-peer
marketing tool - to advertise employment opportunities with the agency,²
said George Little, a CIA spokesman. ³This effort, part of a much broader
campaign leveraging traditional and new advertising media, was used strictly
for informational purposes.²

The DNI has also built an internal collaborative site called Intellipedia,
modelled on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It has also created a
version of http://del.icio.us, the social book-marking site, for members of
the intelligence community. Another tool that has been developed is a
national intelligence library, which can be accessed from A-Space.

While MySpace and Facebook have spread like wildfire, particularly among the
younger generations of internet users, members of the intelligence community
are divided. Mike Wertheimer, the senior DNI official for analytic
transformation and technology, illustrates the dilemma with an example from
an internal blog thread last year.

A female employee who had arranged a high-school reunion on MySpace asked
why the community had not created a similar tool. That prompted a response
that she wasn¹t thinking big enough. But Mr Wertheimer says two other people
immediately jumped in with concerns about a ³counter-intelligence nightmare²
that could cost US lives.

³That is very typical within the intelligence community of the approach to
social networking tools,² says Mr Wertheimer. ³The positive value isŠnot
easily quantified. The negative, the risk for people under coverŠ is drawn
out so starkly, even though it is speculative, that they tend to carry the
day.²

But he says the intelligence community needs to consider that not sharing
information can also cost lives, a lesson learned from the 9/11 attacks.

³We are willing to experiment in ways that we have never experimented
before,² he adds. ³It breaks a lot of traditional senses that people¹s lives
are at risk, and how can you take any step that increases that risk.²

Mr Wertheimer says A-Space will initially be voluntary to assuage worries of
spies concerned about blowing their cover. The DNI wants some foreign
intelligence services to participate in A-Space, but there has been some
resistance.

³I would say in the entire community, the folks most virulently against
sharing the information are the foreign partners,² says Mr Wertheimer, who
says the also want access to the intelligence library.

³They ask Œwell can we have access?¹,² says Mr Wertheimer. ³I ask them back
if you want access, what services are you willing to create for the library,
what data are you willing to put in it, have you thought through your
risk/profit scenario? They kind of stand back because that is not normally
how we talk to them. It is a new day.²

A-Space will be equipped with web-based email and software that recommends
areas of interest to the user just like Amazon suggests books to its
customers. The site will also allow users to create and modify documents,
and determine user privileges, in a similar fashion to Google Documents.

Mr Wertheimer says the new infrastructures should help break down some of
the physical communications problems in the intelligence community.

³I am unable to send email, and even make secure phone calls, to a good
portion of the Intel community from my desktop because of firewalls,² he
says.

In September, the DNI and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a
public-private intelligence group, will hold a conference to enlist support
and ideas from the private sector and academia.

³We have gotten to the stage where we want to open this up, tap more ideas,
stimulate some competition to help us here,² says Mr Fingar.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, invited the chief
executives of Facebook and MySpace to participate, but so far Mark
Zuckerburg, the CEO of Facebook, has declined. A Facebook spokeswoman said
the decision was purely because of scheduling conflicts.

Email the reporter: demetri.sevastopulo at ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007