State Department Relies Heavily on Google to Gather Intelligence

What a laugh...

www.guardian.co.uk...

Some people may Google to locate lost loves, or check out potential new ones. The state department resorts to the internet search engine when it is trying to penetrate the clandestine world of international nuclear weapons proliferators.

A junior foreign service officer, employed at the state department for only a few months and who was given the task of investigating Iranians with possible links to the country's nuclear programme typed "Iran and nuclear" into his browser, the Washington Post reported today.

Hi-freakin'-larious.

I never would have guessed this would get out. What an embarassment!

They really set themselves up to be misled, no? And Google must be thrilled at the possibilities.

Maybe they'll market a government-only version of their software to intelligence agencies.



I put this in the Disinfo forum because I think this story illustrates just how easily our officials can be misled by media offerings available on the WWW.

Also, this was notable, from the article.

The newspaper said the state department adopted the research method after the CIA refused to reveal any names of Iranians involved in the country's weapons programme. The agency claimed that agents on the Iran desk were already overworked and that such a disclosure could compromise its intelligence sources on Iran.

Interesting, no?

The headline might have read: "CIA tells State Department Where to Stick it"



And here I thought the recent CIA purge had wiped clean all hints of resistance to the will of the Executive branch and its many minions?

It's pretty sad that one branch of government is not giving intel to another. Have we NOT learned anything since 9/11?

I know someone who works at the State Department for "Nuclear Non-Proliferation". I'll ask him what he thinks of this. If he can tell me that is.

Nuke secrets are already out and most likely being sold.

Was it a student that went to the Robert Oppenheimer Research Center
, at Los Alamos, and found hydrogen bomb plans.

Author Lyne went there to get information on Tesla's holdings and
was refused.

So what do you think was more important.

Why do you find this funny? It's called open source collection, and is as valid as any other form of intelligence collection. You don't blindly accept what you find on the web (like all intelligence, it is assigned a rating based on source and corroboration with other intelligence), and the simple fact is there are some great sources on the web. Why do you think ATS gets so many .gov hits?

I find it funny because it shows the extent of the State Department's intelligence gathering ability - it's on-par with a teenager on his parent's 'puter.' I'm a big fan of equality, and it tickles me pink to think that the citizens are on a level playing field (sort of) with the State Department.

Does anyone think there might be a good reason that the CIA doesn't want to give the State Department valuable information? Alternately, could this be a sign that the purge was successful, and the compromised CIA is attempting to sabotage the State Department?

I'm very curious what's going on between these two entities...

It is interesting for sure. I'm not entirely sure what intelligence gathering responsibilities the State Department has , but I'm sure they keep a watching brief on a range of issues. And, being in Australia and all, I probably have no right to make an assumption anyways!

I've certainly seen situations where one agency refuses to share classified data with another agency (usually a non-intelligence gathering one) when the originator of the intelligence has concerns about the security of the information. Maybe this is part of what is happening here?