Nov 2, 2006

Intellipedia

U.S. Intelligence Czar John Negroponte's office announced a new "spy's version" of Wikipedia, and supposedly it's the future of intelligence. Officers at dozens of different agencies in the Intelligence Community can contribute to entries (as the general populace does to Wikipedia), and also view those written by others. It seems like another good step towards getting some famously combatative Intelligence agencies to cooperate.

According to the Reuters story, "[Intelligence officials] also said it could lead to more accurate intelligence reports because the system allows a wider range of officials to scrutinize material and keeps a complete, permanent record of individual contributions including dissenting points of view. That might help avoid errors of the kind that led to the widely criticized 2002 national intelligence estimate that said Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."

On the downside, they also acknowledge there is a greater risk of sensitive intelligence data being leaked when so many people have access to it.

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