Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 02:33:08 -0500
CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence =
U=
.S. spies are looking increasingly online for intelligence and they've beco=
me major consumers of social media.
In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.=
U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are=
looking increasingly online
for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media.
"We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goo=
dness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC), in remarks to the Central Intelligence Retirees' Asso=
ciation last October. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't e=
xist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead. We have groups looking at wh=
at they call 'Citizens Media': people taking pictures with their cell phone=
s and posting them on the Internet."
In November 2005, the OSC subsumed the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Informa=
tion Service, which housed the agency's foreign media analysts. The OSC is =
responsible for collecting and analyzing public information, including Inte=
rnet content.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists pr=
oject on government secrey, posted transcript of Naquin's remarks on his blog. "I found the speech int=
eresting and thoughtful," he said in an e-mail. "I would not have thought o=
f YouTube as an obvious source of intelligence, but I think it's a good sig=
n that the Open Source Cent=
er is looking at it, and at other new media."
Not everyone in the intelligence community sees the value in open sour=
ce intelligence. "[W]e still have an education problem on both ends, both w=
ith the folks who are proponents of open source but perhaps don't know exac=
tly why, and folks internally who are still wondering why I am sitting at t=
he same table they are," said Naquin.
But further acceptance of open source intelligence, of the Internet an=
d social media, seems inevitable in the intelligence community if only beca=
use traditional media is becoming less relevant. "What we're seeing [in] ac=
tuality is a decline, a relatively rapid decline, in the impact of the prin=
ted press -- traditional media," said Naquin. "A lot more is digital, and a=
lot more is online. It's also a lot more social. Interaction is a much big=
ger part of media and news than it used to be."
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:25 CST
Despite its name the Open Source Center hasn't proven to be particular=
ly open with its findings. "One area where Mr. Naquin's Center falls short,=
in my opinion, is in public access to its products, which is very limited,=
" said Aftergood. "I know that there are some copyright barriers to open pu=
blication of foreign media items. But there shouldn't be any such barriers =
to release of the Center's own analytical products. And yet they are hard t=
o come by. I hope this is one aspect of the Center's activities that will b=
e reconsidered."
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