Spying and the internet

Contrast the post below this one with Ronald Marks' piece in the Washington Times:

A recent director of central intelligence was asked by one of his senior intelligence analysts about establishing a group within the community to look at managing all the new sources of information on the Internet. The director immediately snorted back, "I only have money to pay for secrets."
This is but one example of the ill-informed and unhappy basis on which America's intelligence analysts have been dealing with the modern Internet age.
With billions of pages of free information expanding every day on the Internet, access is limited by both security concerns and language barriers. With intelligence analysis in shambles, new Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte must position America's intelligence organizations for the 21st century. He and his chosen senior intelligence analyst must come to grips with the exploding challenge of so-called "open-source" information, harnessing this source to bolster a new system of effective and useful analysis for America's policymakers.

...

By the late 1980s, it became quite clear that new and extensive information and databases were available to many in the outside world. With the invention and explosion of the Internet in the mid-1990s, "secrets" of the Cold War era simply did not always have the same value they used to have. Today, America now deals with enemies who gleefully post their intentions, strengths and locations on the Web for all to see.
So what should the new DNI do about this expanding "information gap?" The Robb-Silberman commission was the latest to recommend the most effective solution -- establish within the intelligence community an Open Source Directorate; a cadre of no more than "50 analysts that could become the intelligence experts in finding and using unclassified, open source information." This would leaven greatly the current stale analysis taking place in the intelligence community.
Perhaps Mr. Negroponte should contact Mr. Weisberg and offer him a job.

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