CIA to Launch MySpace for Spies

The CIA is to launch a social networking site to allow members of the intelligence community around the world to converse and swap ideas and information online.^[1] In fact, finding classified information may be as easy as shopping on Amazon.com, where government agents will soon be able find valuable information through an online-recommendation system: Spies who read this report, it might say, also found these reports useful.^[2]

That is one of several features the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) might borrow from mainstream technology as it designs its new Web-based information-sharing system, the A-Space site.^[3] A-Space will launch in December, and the new system is intended to "tunnel through" the 16 different intelligence-gathering agencies in hopes of streamlining data sharing, said Michael Wertheimer, DNI's assistant deputy director for analytic transformation and technology.^[4]

"This is very typical within the intelligence community of the approach to social networking tools…We are willing to experiment in ways that we have never experimented before. It breaks a lot of traditional sense that people's lives are at risk, and how can you take any step that increases that risk?....This is a revolutionary concept for us, [t]his is unlike any other technology we've created," said Wertheimer.^[5]

The site will have web-based email and a predictive program that matches interests to information, and A-Space will be open only to US agents initially, but the DNI hopes to include agents from other countries as long as they share, rather than just take, information.^[6]

A-Space, which will cost about $5 million to design, will operate like a password-protected corporate intranet, where companies post important documents, after-hours contact information or special skills of certain employees.^[7] Moving such information online would allow employees to access it from anywhere they can find a Internet-connected computer, whether that's at home or at a coffee shop.^[8]

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^[1] Iain Thomson, CIA plans social networking site for spies, vnunet.com, Aug 24, 2007, available at http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2197360/cia-plans-spy-social-networking (last visited August 27, 2007).
^[2] Sam Diaz, Consumer Innovations to Inform Web Site for Spies
Washington Post, August 25, 2007; Page D01, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401868.html (last visited August 27, 2007).
^[3] Diaz, supra note 2.
^[4] Id.
^[5] Thomson, supra note 1.
^[6] Id.
^[7] Id.
^[8] Id.