Fergie's Tech Blog

Spyblogging: The CIA Gets It

Van Wallach writes over on Kesher Talk:

Add another tool to the eyes-in-the-sky and trenchcoat brigade: The Central Intelligence Agency is digging up the espionage dirt by reading blogs.

Langley must be proud of this effort because it made officials available to talk to the Washington Times about its Open Source Center (OSC), started in November. Consider this:

A Defense Department official said Chinese military bloggers have become a valuable source of intelligence on Beijing's secret military buildup. For example, China built its first Yuan-class attack submarine at an underground factory that was unknown to U.S. intelligence until a photo of the submarine appeared on the Internet in 2004.

The CIA adds its own technology tools to the mix, sifting blogs for key data and checking its reliability.

posted by Fergie @ 4/20/2006 09:34:00 AM