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CIA ASIO and wiki-power!

ByLaurel Papworth

Hey, if you can figure out a login/password, lemme know? But ssshhhh! 🙂 Oh y’know it’s funny to find out the CIA are using social media for intellipedia: Intellipedia was founded in April 2006 [1] and consists of three wikis running on JWICS, SIPRNet, and Intelink-U. They are used by individuals with appropriate clearances from…

Hey, if you can figure out a login/password, lemme know? But ssshhhh! 🙂

Oh y’know it’s funny to find out the CIA are using social media for intellipedia:

Intellipedia was founded in April 2006 [1] and consists of three wikis running on JWICS, SIPRNet, and Intelink-U. They are used by individuals with appropriate clearances from the 16 agencies of the United States intelligence community and other national-security related organizations, including Combatant Commands and federal departments. The wikis are not open to the public.

… well goshdarnit *pouts*

I guess if your organisation says they don’t want to use ‘social’ media cos it’s not secure, you could always mention CIA and MediaWiki.

Intellipedia is a project of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES) office headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland. It includes information on the regions, people, and issues of interest to the communities using its host networks. Intellipedia uses MediaWiki, the same software used by the Wikipedia free-content encyclopedia project.[2] ODNI officials say that the project will change the culture of the U.S. intelligence community, widely blamed for failing to “connect the dots” before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Does ASIO have a social media site, a wiki etc?? Shall we get together and donate one? Nothing grows in walled gardens(silos of information) and – I’m not kidding – free-ing the information across the intrawebz will be paramount to a company’s survival. Or a country’s.

For NathanaelB:
I won’t rest until we have a Facebook App that reads that alert via RSS or something. For teh sake of teh childrenz.

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7 Comments

  2. I put another picture in for you Nathanael. But so’s ya know
    • Low – terrorist attack is not expected
    • Medium – terrorist attack could occur
    • High – terrorist attack is likely
    • Extreme – terrorist attack is imminent or has occurred
    Me, i always expect a terrorist attack. Especially when *terrorist* is defined as anyone anywhere anytime – bank robbers, footy yobbos and demonstration picketers for a start.

  3. The Intellipedia wikipedia entry is well worth a read.

    You can also find out a little more by googling for CIA press releases and official presentations on Intellipedia. If half of what is said is true, Intellipedia is a very successful wiki and information sharing channel.

    It also destroys other myths about wikis and web 2.0 tech. Like the most active contributor is a retired analyst aged 67.

  4. Laurel, I travelled to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week that was the key source for all the breathless media over the CIA’s work. I have a fairly extensive review of the presentation the CIA guys gave at the conference and had the privilege of meeting both Don and Sean.

    They are incredibly nice guys, totally understand our little world of social media/networking and are working incredibly hard to broaden the reach of Intellipedia.

    My post is at http://www.acidlabs.org/2008/06/10/enterprise-20-conference-from-the-bottom-up-building-the-21st-century-intelligence-community/ – there are a few links to the presentation and interview videos worth following.

  5. John Pescatore, a VP at Gartner, makes a very valid point in the latest SANS NewsBites:

    “The intelligence community has been through this before. Intelink was an early example of using Intranet web technology to foster information sharing and collaboration outside of the rigid lines of command and control in the Intelligence community. It proved that unless you change the processes, just adding the technology doesn’t change much.”

  6. @nick cowie aye hon, the link above goes directly to the wikipedia entry. And I love the fact that the main contributors to wikis are older folk – way to go to trap a lifetimes worth of knowledge! Yay!

    @stephen lemme hyperlink that for you dear Stephen’s blog post I’ll have a read later this morning. 🙂

    @stilgherrian I can always rely on you for the voice of cynicism err reality. 😛 I do think that our secret services have learnt from terrorist groups – which actually function like hyper techno, disintermediated swarm/cell social/terrorist networks. Nah I don’t think we’d hear from bin Laden “Gosh, everythign I ever learnt about forming terrorist orgs, I learnt from Facebook”, but these communities do have a lot in common (Purpose, Values, Roles, Leaders, Etiquette, Rituals, Subgroups, Tools). Well I’m guessing they do, I don’t actually belong to an Axis of Evil Fanclub… yet. Heh.

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