CIA launches 'Facebook for spies'

CIA launches Facebook for spies

news.bbc.co.uk

The CIA is to open a communications tool for its staff, modelled on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, the Financial Times reports.

The project, known as A-Space, aims to improve the way that intelligence agents communicate, it said.

Officials believe that the online workplace will allow staff to better analyse information together.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 21/8/2007 by nickh]

[edit on 21/8/2007 by nickh]

I guess it could be a good idea... but will it actually be on the web, or on an internal network of the agency's?

If it's fully online, I'd like to see someone hack their "intelligence library"... that would be one in the face of the US intelligence agency!


news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 21/8/2007 by nickh]

[edit on 21/8/2007 by nickh]

If they put it on the internet, and no one else hacks it for them, they will lie and say its been hacked.

I wonder if that would constitute a national emergency.

Well if it's online and the participation is voluntary then what's the point in it?
Any agent with half a brain isn't going to put any sensitive intelligence on the web just to be hacked by someone else. If CIA staff are trained properly i'd expect to see the user count at 0.

I would be very surprised if this is legitimate and public network accessible. Dial-up I could understand, but not connected to the Internet. To my knowledge the CIA has a policy of not having any sensitive systems accessible from the public network.

There is of course the possibility that the system will be full of disinformation and false communications so that if access is hacked it will be impossible to tell the good info from the bad.

There's an intelligence wiki on SIPRnet called Intellipedia that's pretty fun.

Everyone was sort of leery about it at first, there used to be a forum sort of thing where they tried to bring themselves to permit inter-agency sharing of stuff but the observation was that the people who used it a lot suddenly didn't post anymore, so it was obviously a suicide sort of thing.

But for some reason, that doesn't happen with Intellipedia.

But no, you can't get to it from the civilian net.

[edit on 21-8-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

[edit on 21-8-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by apc
There is of course the possibility that the system will be full of disinformation and false communications so that if access is hacked it will be impossible to tell the good info from the bad.

Yeah, I think that seems fairly possible... they could perhaps be doing the whole thing as a disinfo project - that's why they've publicly announced the creation of it.

It wouldn't have people from the operational side of the CIA I would imagine. More the people back at Langley doing all the analysis.

Ok. I put down $50 for 3 months until the site is hacked. Any takers?

Meh.

This is will be an internal network. No civilian access. Therefore, not that exciting.

Now if they would allow the public to view their profile with the exception of the pictures, then perhaps my dream of discovering what kind of music CIA agents listen to will finally come to light.