[Infowarrior] - CIA, FBI push 'Facebook for spies'

[Richard Forno]

CIA, FBI push 'Facebook for spies'
By Larry Shaughnessy
CNN

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/05/facebook.spies/index.html?eref=edition

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When you see people at the office using such  
Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those  
workers are slacking off.
A social-networking site for the world of spying officially launches  
for the U.S. intelligence community this month.

A social-networking site for the world of spying officially launches  
for the U.S. intelligence community this month.

But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security  
Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new  
social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

"It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much  
more," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national  
intelligence for analysis.

The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for  
analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Instead of posting thoughts about the new Avenged Sevenfold album or  
Jessica Alba movie, CIA analysts could use A-Space to share  
information and opinion about al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or  
Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea.

The new A-Space site has been undergoing testing for months and  
launches officially for the nation's entire intelligence community  
September 22.

"It's a place where not only spies can meet but share data they've  
never been able to share before," Wertheimer said. "This is going to  
give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in  
public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A-Space  
umbrella."

Wertheimer demonstrated the program to CNN to show how analysts will  
use it to collaborate.

"One perfect example is if Osama bin Laden comes out with a new video.  
How is that video obtained? Where are the very sensitive secret  
sources we may have to put into a context that's not apparent to the  
rest of the world?" Wertheimer asked.

"In the past, whoever captured that video or captured information  
about the video kept it in-house. It's highly classified, because it  
has so very short a shelf life. That information is considered  
critical to our understanding."

The goal of A-Space, like intelligence analysis in general, is to  
protect the United States by assessing all the information available  
to the spy agencies. Missing crucial data can have enormous  
implications, such as an FBI agent who sent an e-mail before September  
11, 2001, warning of people learning to fly airplanes but not learning  
to land them.

"There was the question, 'Was that a dot that failed to connect?'  
Well, that person did this via e-mail," Wertheimer said. "A-Space is  
the kind of place where you can log that observation and know that  
your fellow analysts can see that."

Even though Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites that  
inspired A-Space are predominantly the domain of young people, there  
apparently is no such generational divide on A-Space.

"We have found that participation in A-Space crosses every conceivable  
age line and experience line. People are excited, no matter what age  
group," Wertheimer said.

Of course, the material on A-Space is highly classified, so it won't  
be available for the public. Only intelligence personnel with the  
proper security clearance, and a reason to be examining particular  
information, can access the site. The creators of A-Space do not want  
it to be used by some future double agent such as Jonathan Pollard or  
Robert Hanssen to steal America's 21st-century secrets.

"We're building [a] mechanism to alert that behavior. We call that,  
for lack of a better term, the MasterCard, where someone is using  
their credit card in a way they've never used it before, and it alerts  
so that maybe that credit card has been stolen," Wertheimer said.  
"Same thing here. We're going to actually do patterns on the way  
people use A-Space."

Yes, analysts can collect friends on A-Space the way people can on  
Facebook. But nobody outside the intelligence community will ever know  
-- because they're secret.