CIS Week Three Assignment Two (or whatever)

For those of you not in My CIS class, this may seem like a pretty off the wall entry. In fact, it is an assignment.
Once you have created the blog, read the article titled Military Intelligence Goes Web 2.0. The article talks about how the intelligence community is adopting Web 2.0 tools. Using this brief paper as a guide and having written a position paper as part of a team, do you think it is a good idea for the Intelligence Community to adopt these tools? Post these thoughts to your blog (make sure it is at least 250 words).

Frankly, it scares the pants off of me. I am still of the opinion that these things are nice playthings and they keep teenagers off the streets (though it also encourages them to do things like Tweet while they drive). I can also see how they do a great job of creating interconnectedness. For spy, intelligence and law enforcement agencies that have had cooperation thrust upon them of late, they allow for a better sense of immediacy, and perhaps even seamlessness never believed possible. Great. The scenario of subscribing to the Islamofascist daily blog and receiving information and updates on Bin Ladin’s spring break panty raid antics seems beneficial, I suppose. Everybody knows they will be from last year’s spring break anyhow since he is buried in a cave somewhere in the Hindukush. From what I hear the intelligence community has the whole web wired and since I have included the word ‘TERRORIST’ in my entry, some poor schmuck down in the bowels of an office building in Arlington, VA is stuck reading this. If he gets as many of these as I get updates from our PBWorks site, I pity the poor feller.

There is a history of employing the best hackers after pardoning them. Using these things as a trap to find talent is a possibility, but what happens when the newly hired IT dork employed over at the State Department spills his password to the übersexy Russian agent? She edits everything and creates havoc the Kremlin could never have dreamed of before 2.0 came along. Granted, we can use this conversely to create disinformation, but then this becomes just one of many tools to do that, making this a major step how?

Further, these tools allow for anyone to instantly become an ‘expert’. Do we really want Poindexter editing 007’s intelligence data because after a night of binging on chicken vindaloo, Poindexter now feels he is an expert on the Indian/Pakistanian conflict? Come on, the Indians and the Pakistanis are not even experts on this; that is unless they have watched Gandhi. Further, given my long-windedness and penchant for being opinionated, do we really want me editing anything? In the new blogosphere, even I am an instant expert. Then again, I have seen Gandhi several times and love chicken vindaloo.

In short, I think it is a great toy. I think it may become a great tool. It seems much too informal and unsecure for something as important as intelligence. We could not even keep planes from hitting buildings before this was prevalent. I have a hard time seeing that this will firm up our ability to protect ourselves, but it would be nice to get those Bin Ladin panty raid pics.