December 10, 2006

Bloggers as Spies: Open Source Spying to Fight Terrorism

I've argued for organizing hackers as a response to cyber jihadis ("cyber privateering"), so why not bloggers? Clive Thomas argues this very thing in the New York Times Magazine.

Of course, most (but not all) of what Thomas is arguing about is actual government employees working in intel. But the principal is the same and based on the same assumption about the nature of information: it is something no one person can have a monopoly on and is decentralized.

In other words, it is very difficult for a single individual to know enough about our enemies and what they plan, but it may be possible for decentralized networks of individuals to know enough. Enough to say, catch the bad guys or stop them before they do something bad. We've actually seen this over and over agains in recent years with individuals making contacts with would-be terrorists and then bringing in the FBI and other authorities only after the initial investigation phase was completed.

We know quite a few people who are sleuthing behind the scenes . Some have even helped take out some very bad guys. Some are even bloggers. (In fact, a little birdie tells me Fox News may have someting on Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam tomorrow or the next day from one of these sources--keep your eyes peeled!)

And some of what is recommended in the article is stuff we do here at The Jawa Report. Daily. So, keep reading. You didn't know it, but you are a spy. How cool is that?

NY Times Magazine:(Hat tip: Professor Chaos for the e-mail)

Fingar says yes, for an interesting reason: top-secret information is becoming less useful than it used to be. “The intelligence business was initially, if not inherently, about secrets — running risks and expending a lot of money to acquire secrets,” he said, with the idea that “if you limit how many people see it, it will be more secure, and you will be able to get more of it. But that’s now appropriate for a small and shrinking percentage of information.” The time is past for analysts to act like “monastic scholars in a cave someplace,” he added, laboring for weeks or months in isolation to produce a report.

Fingar says that more value can be generated by analysts sharing bits of “open source” information — the nonclassified material in the broad world, like foreign newspapers, newsletters and blogs. It used to be that on-the-ground spies were the only ones who knew what was going on in a foreign country. But now the average citizen sitting in her living room can peer into the debates, news and lives of people in Iran. “If you want to know what the terrorists’ long-term plans are, the best thing is to read their propaganda — the stuff out there on the Internet,” the W.M.D. analyst told me. “I mean, it’s not secret. They’re telling us.”