All news, All about Intellipedia!

I just saw this Yale Daily News article by Michael Seringhaus, a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics: ‘Intellipedia’? CIA jumps on wiki wagon

Below are some quotes and comments:

Here's the positive:

At a basic level, the new system makes sense. With 16 different agencies, shared goals and many areas of overlap, the intelligence community could likely profit from a comprehensive, communally updated information depository. Ideally, such a system would automate information collation and offer a pre-synthesized crock pot of high-test tattle. Preparing the National Intelligence Estimate would then become simply a matter of bulk-dumping the wiki's contents to a file and whisking it to the president.

And now for some not exactly positive quotes: 

...I doubt Intellipedia will nurture or reward dissenting voices within the intelligence establishment anytime soon. If it doesn't, we've just affixed a multi-agency rubber stamp to the work of the same warmongering misinformation artists who designed and implemented the Iraq war. Jolly good.

Even if we are satisfied with the motives of intelligence staff, the Intellipedia system still raises security concerns. Is it wise to publish sensitive documents en masse to a digital network, and then make them available to thousands of workers from assorted agencies?

The Transportation Security Authority and national laboratories can now access Intellipedia. There is talk of inviting Britain, Canada and Australia to contribute, and even of granting access to China, allegedly so doctors there can comment on avian flu. All this seems like a recipe for trouble. Then again, I've always secretly hoped to see airport baggage handlers and rural Chinese doctors weigh in on American strategic defense policy, so why not? Let the media leaks begin.

Eric Haseltine, chief scientist for the Director of National Intelligence, recently bragged: "We are using wikis, we are using blogs, we are using chat, we are using instant messaging." Impressive haul, Eric: the Four Horsemen of Internet time-wasting, right there. Just add Facebook and you'll have a full house.

It is gratifying to note that Mark Foley's very public loss to instant messenger-fueled temptation last month seemingly has not curbed government enthusiasm for fun Internet distraction.

In a sense, Intellipedia is a sobering reminder of just how ho-hum the intelligence community really is. We glamorize the business: Spies are patriotic charmers with high-tech gadgets, and analysts are devoted and omniscient eggheads with advanced computers and top-secret software. It's deflating, then, when the CIA squeals over publicly available open-source hand-me-downs like a child on Christmas morning. Yeah, wikis are cool. We know. We use them.

Sigh. Does this mean there's no laser watch?

Sigh. The world is not always really not like how Hollywood presents it... (Digression: Though sometimes Hollywood does tell true stories. I just saw "Catch a Fire." An eye-opening story and excellent movie!)

Posted by eMarv at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this article after seeing it bookmarked in kirbyp's del.icio.us bookmarks. Thanks kirbyp!

Now for the quotes and comments:

"...officials from the 16 U.S. spy agencies — and even some beyond that — are increasingly using a new internal website called 'Intellipedia'..."

"...even some beyond that..." Interesting! At least one of the beyond that is the TSA which they refer to further down in the article.

"All of these tools ... are in their Model T stage," conceded Sean Dennehy of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, who helped develop the Intellipedia.

Congrats Sean! (You will be in the history books, for sure.) Regarding the Model T comment, it is great to hear that the Intelligence Community is not waiting to develop a perfect solution (which doesn't exist) and wait to deploy it (when it is obsolete). Agile methodology at its best! Throw something out there, let people pound on it, massage it, throw it out there again and repeat. BTW, it looks like Sean is becoming the king of the memorable sound bite. Remember his other quote in the LA Times article: "It moves us away from homogenized intelligence..." (I also saw an interesting quote in Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion that extends Sean's comment: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." Walter Lippman. I wonder if that is what happened in the past...)

"When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a Manhattan apartment building this month, officials from the Transportation Security Administration and eight other agencies updated information on the accident 80 times in two hours."

Can you say success story? Imagine if this were to happen with any other potential terrorist event. Actually, who's to say it hasn't happened already?

"Don Burke, a CIA officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, said more than 3,600 users have created log-ons to use the site..."

I wonder how many are active users or what percentage of the registered users are actually active. My guess is that they haven't tapped into the Long Tail yet since as mentioned further in the article there are "tens of thousands of users."

Getting some traditionalists to contribute takes encouragement. Intellipedia's architects have resorted to sending small, black garden shovels to contributors.

"I dig Intellipedia!" says the handle. "It's wiki, wiki, Baby."

Want to see what it looks like? That you'll have to Google.

Why not just get rid of the traditionalists? (Just joking, I know there will always be traditionalists but it doesn't hurt to ask... :) As you all know, you need not look further than this blog's Intellipedia shovel category to see the pic. We also know that they aren't giving them only to traditionalists as Kevin is proof.

Posted by eMarv at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)