ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

The Financial Times reports that the U.S. has launched "myspace for spies." Although the name "SpySpace" may be more apt,  the program, officially known as "A-space" will be opened to the entire intelligence community in December.

The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of “MySpace for analysts” – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited.

The intelligence community already has its own versions of Wikipedia and del.icio.us.

The DNI has also built an internal collaborative site called Intellipedia, modeled on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It has also created a version of http://del.icio.us, the social book-marking site, for members of the intelligence community. Another tool that has been developed is a national intelligence library, which can be accessed from A-Space.

The ultimate goal is to make information-sharing easier without compromising security.

Mr Wertheimer says the new infrastructures should help break down some of the physical communications problems in the intelligence community.

“I am unable to send email, and even make secure phone calls, to a good portion of the Intel community from my desktop because of firewalls,” he says.

Whether the sharing of information poses safety concerns for the spies or privacy and due process concerns for potential domestic targets has yet to be evaluated.

H/T BoingBoing