Spy Agencies Turn to Wikipedia for Information

Spy Agencies Turn to Newspapers, NPR, and Wikipedia for Information

A few days ago, a senior officer at the Pentagon called his intelligence officer into his office. The boss had heard a news report about China while driving to his office and wanted some answers. It wasn't a tough assignment, given the news coverage, but there was a hitch. "There was plenty of information in the public domain about the topic," recalls the intelligence officer, a 10-year veteran. "And yet, if there wasn't some classified information cited in my report, the boss would never believe it was accurate."

The officer calls it "the seduction of the 'top-secret' stamp."

That's a common refrain in the intelligence community when the subject of so-called open-source information comes up. It's the kind of anecdote recounted over and over again this week at the intelligence community's second annual conference on the use of open-source information.

Another anecdote involves public information—commonly newspaper reports—that is paraphrased or quoted verbatim and then stamped "classified" to make the report more appealing to superiors.

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May be Sciforums is in the list too...

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Not really...sometimes when I am posting, I do a Google on specifics, and my past link shows up...on other subjects...

 

There are a lot of people in the intelligence community who have a lot of time in their hands....

 

Since WWII, the reason America pulled ahead of Russia in technology and hence in economy is because of our exchange of ideas among our citizenry. So, it is not surprising that some of the stuff to show up from behind closed doors. The benefits are more than the down side....it is that energent properties that you hear about.

However we are slowly going backwards...not because anyone is restricting the data, but because our current activity process does not lend itself to sharing knowledge for whatever reason...job security or whatever.

This is why, no one understands what is going on in the market, economy, job prospects, crime, punishment, short term and long term projections etc....too much information...