Spooks Get Their Own MySpace
Duncan Riley
33 comments »
The American Intelligence community has joined the social networking phenomenon with the launch of A-Space, a MySpace style social network.
The move is said to be part of the ongoing effort to transform the American Intelligence community following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In a FT.com report, Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis said that A-Space would be “MySpace for analysts” that will break down firewalls across the “traditionally stove-piped intelligence community.”
A-Space will initially be voluntary “to assuage worries of spies concerned about blowing their cover.” The service 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
The US Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December.
our tax dollars at work….CIA posting on their own myspace instead of looking for terrorists
WTF???
This is nuts. I keep waiting for you to tell me “just kidding”.
The intelligence community, with fun profiles! Will there be flashing picture messages that say “Happy hump-day” like on MySpace?
Just another way to spy on their own people. How you expect security people to put their information online is beyond me.
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - The Online Rental Marketplace
Not sure where you get your information.
Both a-space.com and a-space.gov don’t come up.
Is A-Space a fake name, because its a secret, or is this a joke?
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - the Online Rental Marketplace
Tim
I believe it’s a closed network, probably run over an intranet or something like that. The name came from the FT article but I have read about this previously.
I’ve heard this Netflix thing is popular. Maybe the CIA can make one of those too.
Interesting idea. Not sure how this will work exactly, would be concerned about information leakage - but I suppose that can happen in traditional forms as well.
This is great and all but can they do anything about Jenna, Erin, Missy and all the other fake accounts that keep asking to be my friend?
I don’t understand the problem with this. Part of the problem pre-9/11 was a lack of information sharing between the different agencies. This seems like an easy way to do that.
Interesting idea. Is this connected with InfraGard, the critical infrastructure protection group?
Not sure if you know what the term “spook” means but I’d suggest checking urban dictionary or perhaps googling then changing the title of this post as its quite the racist term.
Web2.0 rules!
Duncan, April Fools Day isn’t for almost another year! Are you sure you couldn’t have saved this story?
So who has beta invites???
How cute. Perhaps Her Majesty’s version in the UK could be called MI_Space
This is crazy. If anyone without the proper privileges and permissions were to get access this social network imagine how easy it would be to just loot massive amounts of connected but sensitive information.
This sounds like a really bad move. It’s fine for sites like myspace where random people actually want to be discovered, but when you’re talking about sensitive intelligence that has to do with the security of the country I don’t think the social networking site paradigm, as it exists right now, is one to copy.
I’ll be checking torrent sites for massive dumps of sensitive data within 48 hours of it starting…
lol
Stupid stupid idea.
Unnecessary.
What’s the problem here. Do we want government intelligence groups to be intelligent or not?
The risk is with security, we all agree. But that’s always the case when information is shared among folks –it’s been like that since the beg of time, and will never end.
The US Intel Community has been using social tools for a few years now (Intellipedia, etc.) as a knowledge-sharing, fast-coordination and distribution network. This is public domain information, so I’m not telling tales out of school. Similar efforts are occuring in other intel communities such as Australia and, I imagine, the UK.
The whole story is very interesting and worth following from go to whoa as the intel community tries to recover from the disasters of incidents such as Oklahoma City and 9/11.
For a great background, read “The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community” - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa....._id=755904
I thought the CIA already had a social network …
Sorry, can’t resist this on, thought the CIA already had a social network called FB, according to … http://albumoftheday/facebook
Sorry for dupl. post, please delete first one … no spam intended
I Can’t resist. Wo I guess this will be called “SpySpace”?
This is just strange
Huh?
I’ve actually been working with a friend of mine at another intel agency for a while to help get social tools/concepts in place with the intel community. There are currently scores of agencies and thousands of people and tons of systems. There’s very little connection between then, due in large part to the way the attitude about inter-agency cooperation has happened in years past. (I.e. there hasn’t been any, or it’s been at the point of a sword)
This is a VERY good move that should have happened decades ago. To address a few points raised:
* Strange concept: Not really. Tons of organizations, thousands of people, very little inter-agency communication. Sounds like a perfect concept to me.
* Money: Yes, it costs money. So does every single other thing that the intel agencies do. As someone who advocates for more social tools and activities, this seems like a GREAT way to spend money.
* Secrecy: This is just silly - there is no more or less risk involved in ANYTHING the intel workers are currently doing on a computer and have been doing for decades. This is just another application in a long list of applications.
I say kudos.
My biggest worry with projects like this is that CIA creates their own network, and so does the NSA, DOD, FBI, etc. Then they’re doing marginally better inside the organization, but continuing the problems externally.
Here’s to hoping!
Duncan, as mentioned earlier - your title of this article uses a pretty well known racial term. You might consider changing the title.
urbandictionary[DOT]com/define.php?term=spook
Pretty interesting. Hopefully, this will result in better communication and coordination between agencies.
@Big Dave: Not sure YOU know what the term spook means. Yes, it can be a racist term. It’s also a slang term for “spy.” So, it’s not racist in the context of this post’s title.
Too bad the CIA doesn’t have a sense of humor. They could have called it MySpies.
Some of you dummies think this is a social networking or dating site that is open to everbody for that purpose . If you read the article carefully, it is simply like a “one stop” area where analysts can sift through potentially important information relating to national security. Of course, this is an internal website only (not www) so there wouldn’t be any prying eyes.
thank you for helping me