[Infowarrior] - CIA and NSA Want You to Be Their Friend on Facebook

[Richard Forno]

The CIA and NSA Want You to Be Their Friend on Facebook
The spy agencies are using the popular social-networking site as part  
of their recruiting efforts
By Alex Kingsbury
Posted February 5, 2009

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2009/02/05/the-cia-and-nsa-want-you-to-be-their-friend-on-facebook_print.htm

The online social-networking service Facebook works for finding old  
classmates or arranging happy hours, so why not use it to help recruit  
the next generation of spies? That's what's happening now in  
cyberspace, as the country's intelligence community turns to such  
sites to attract a wider range of résumés.

The CIA now has its own Facebook page, as does the hush-hush National  
Security Agency, which vacuums up the world's communications for  
analysis. Both invite Facebook members to register and read  
information about employment opportunities. It's part of a larger,  
multiyear hiring push to boost the size of the U.S. intelligence  
community.

But should the country's secret spy agency be encouraging potential  
hires to publicize their interest in the intelligence field?  
Apparently, it's not a concern. In the first place, since the groups  
are not directly moderated, it is impossible to control who registers  
as a member. Some may enroll on the site out of curiosity. And, of  
course, none of those who show interest are yet officers in the  
clandestine service.

Even so, once they are on the CIA payroll, employees face no  
prohibition against keeping social-networking accounts or pages.  
"While agency officers are not, as a rule, prohibited from maintaining  
a page on Facebook, they are made aware of precautions to take if they  
choose to do so," says CIA spokesman George Little.

But the Facebook posting shouldn't necessarily cause a run on tinfoil  
hats. The pages aren't designed to surreptitiously gather information  
about those who visit the site, as fearful skeptics allege. In  
reality, says the CIA, they are flashy recruiting posters, "used  
strictly for informational purposes."

"From time to time over the past few years, we have used Facebook to  
share information on employment opportunities with the agency," says  
Little. He says it is part of a much broader campaign "leveraging  
traditional and new advertising media."

The NSA, for its part, sees the bleak tech-sector landscape as an  
opportunity to attract good workers and provide jobs. The Facebook  
site, according to Don Weber, deputy chief in the NSA's recruitment  
office, is just another venue where applicants can learn more about  
the agency, "as well as discuss those opportunities with fellow job  
seekers and NSA recruiters."

The NSA site is four months old and already has nearly 1,000 members,  
along with a listing of current job openings, from cryptological and  
language analysts to information system security designers.

Nearly 800 Facebook members have joined the CIA group, which is free  
and does not require approval from a moderator. "Finding the right  
people to do the job is of the utmost importance," reads the CIA page.  
"You could be one of those people."

It's all a far cry from the historical spy-recruiting process, which  
traditionally focused on Ivy League campuses or the ranks of the U.S.  
military.

Indeed, staffing the country's clandestine service has been a major  
focus in the past few years. President Bush ordered the CIA to  
increase its collection, analysis, and technological workforce by 50  
percent—an ambitious goal that the CIA says has nearly been reached.

The specifics of how much the agency spends on staffing and how many  
people it employs are classified. But in his farewell address to the  
agency at its Virginia headquarters last month, outgoing dDirector  
Michael Hayden told his employees that increasing human resources had  
been one of his greatest achievements as chief of the spy service. In  
the past few years, he said, the CIA has hired "thousands of talented  
new officers, chosen from hundreds of thousands of skilled Americans  
seeking to be part of our mission." He told reporters recently that  
the agency has received between 130,000 and 150,000 job applications  
since the hiring push began.

Moreover, the face of the CIA and the broader intelligence community  
is changing. Minorities accounted for almost a third of new CIA hires  
last year, a record.