CIA Spying On Blogs, YouTube and MySpace
The Open Source Project is really not so open for us to get information about. Updates and documentation such as the newsletter below are not available from their web site but are found by companies that monitor government secrecy.
The spying on our blogs and social networks has been going on since November 2005. The DNI Open Source Center (OSC) based at CIA project was announced by Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter J. Goss. At the time of the announcement Porter Goss stated, “The DNI Open Source Center represents a major strategic initiative and commitment to the value we place on openly available information.”
Open source intelligence collection focuses on compiling and analyzing unclassified data from publicly available sources for use by the CIA, policy makers and other law enforcement agencies. In the past few years, the Open Source Center’s mission has shifted from translating newspaper and television reports from abroad to culling the Web for information on foreign targets. The center trains intelligence agents and others in government.
“This training includes everything from media analysis to advanced Internet exploitation, way beyond Googling,” Naquin said.
In an October 2007 speech published in the CIRA Newsletter by CIA Retiree’s, Doug Naquin, director of the CIA believes YouTube is an obvious source of intelligence. Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, posted portions of Naquin’s speech this week on their blog SecrecyNews.
“We’re looking now at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence,” he said.
“We have groups looking at what they call ‘Citizens Media’: people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the Internet. Then there’s Social Media, phenomena like MySpace and blogs…. A couple years back we identified Iranian blogs as a phenomenon worthy of more attention, about six months ahead of anybody else.”
In an interview with Information Week, Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrecy said;
“I found the speech interesting and thoughtful,” he said in an e-mail. “I would not have thought of YouTube as an obvious source of intelligence, but I think it’s a good sign that the Open Source Center is looking at it, and at other new media.”
Full text of Doug Naquin’s speech
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February 8th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
This fits right in with my post today titled, “Ubiquitous Big Brothers.”
I often have readers from government offices. Today it was from the Dept. of Interior. Not long ago it was the State Department checking a post to see how a senator voted on on one of the FISA bills. I have have visits from the NCTC, and from lots of military sites. I tell myself they are part of my loyal fan base.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Carol Gee:
I too have visitors from different federal agency sitting on my blog. Yes they are a loyal fan base. I can count the minutes from the time I hit publish to the time they start showing up. They are predicable. I often wonder if they bother to read posts that point out their destruction of our country and how fed up all of us are with them.
Feel free to put you post link in the comment section.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The CIA can suck my dick.
Just spell my name correctly.