http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050424-101721-8924r.htm
Spying and the Internet
By Ronald A. Marks
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.
For Mr. Negroponte, the job will not be easy. In many ways, the
intelligence community is a "first-generation" information
business.Established mostly in the 1950s, the intelligence community's
structure and information -sharing techniques reflect its age -- "stove
piping" of information along organizational lines and compartmentation to
the nth degree based sometimes on security, mostly on corporate turf
protection.
Still, the ability of American intelligence to uncover valuable secrets
against its Cold War adversaries was impressive. However, like
first-generation corporate titans Timex and Kodak, time wore on and the
systems that were so successful early began to be challengedandthen
overwhelmed as all around them progressed.
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.
More often than not, the analyst today lives in the rarified air of the
classified world -- of human spies and satellite imagery and signals.
However, the analyst needs and must fit classified information into an
open-source context for it to truly make sense. Moreover, his client the
policymaker lives in the real world of so-called "open-source" information.
Policymakers must and do develop their own "open-source" information systems
through friends, colleagues, advocates and opponents, as well as the usual
news sources.
The limits on analysts receiving open-source information are often
bogged in arcane matters of security -- we don't want "them" to know what we
are looking at -- and old technology that does not allow the analyst to
access state of the art translation capabilities for news sources and
databases world wide. What open intelligence he receives is often a result
of his own haphazard research limited by security concerns and language
capabilities. This simply is unacceptable in this day and age.
As the commission further recommended, technology can over come many of
the security concerns and deal effectively with the dense amount of data in
the open. A specific office could be set up to "acquire or develop when
necessary information technologies" to deal with large amount of
information -- the vast majority of which is not in English. A number of
prominent private-sector technology companies have been dealing with this
issue since the late 1990s. It is perhaps time the intelligence community
used some of its recently acquired lucre to advance its analytical
capabilities into the 21st century.
The analyst and his analysis are the "voice" of American intelligence.
But, it is a voice hobbled by outdated ideas and limited information. As Mr.
Negroponte moves to quickly make the changes that count, dealing with
open-source information is a quick fix that can greatly magnify the power
and reach of American intelligence. We cannot allow this information gap to
stand.
Ronald A. Marks is a 16-year veteran of the CIA and former intelligence
counsel to Senate leaders Robert Dole and Trent Lott.
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