CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’
WASHINGTON (CNN) — When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.
But that’s not the case at the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staffs to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.
It’s every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it’s much, much more, said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. The program is called A-Space, and it’s a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Instead of posting thoughts about the new Avenged Sevenfold album or Jessica Alba movie, CIA analysts could use A-Space to share information and opinion about al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea.
The new A-Space site has been undergoing testing for months and launches officially for the nation’s entire intelligence community on September 22.
It’s a place where not only spies can meet but share data they’ve never been able to share before, Wertheimer said. This is going to give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A Space umbrella.
Wertheimer demonstrated the program to CNN to show how analysts will use it to collaborate.
One perfect example is if Osama bin Laden comes out with a new video. How is that video obtained? Where are the very sensitive secret sources we may have to put into a context that’s not apparent to the rest of the world? Wertheimer said.
In the past, whoever captured that video or captured information about the video kept it in-house. It’s highly classified because it has so very short a shelf life. That information is considered critical to our understanding.
The goal of A-Space, like intelligence analysis in general, is to protect the United States by assessing all the information available to the spy agencies. Missing key data can have enormous implications, such as an FBI agent who sent an e-mail before September 11, 2001, warning of people learning to fly airplanes but not learning to land them.
There was the question, ‘Was that a dot that failed to connect?’ Well that person did this via e-mail, Wertheimer said. A-Space is the kind of place where you can log that observation and know that your fellow analysts can see that.
