Re: Fw: United States - Espionage

On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 22:07:09 -0400" <deboe@quixnet.net> writes:
>www.stratfor.com offers a free intelligence newsletter; this was
>part of today's:
>
>> The intelligence community underestimates the massive amounts
>of
>> information available in the open source. In 1995, for
>instance,
>> the Central Intelligence Agency held a competition to see who
>could
>> gather the most information, most quickly, on Burundi. The
>winner
>> was a Washington company, Open Source Solutions, which left the
>CIA
>> team in the dust. In 24 hours, OSS compiled huge amounts of
>> information, ranging from statistics to scholars; the CIA team
>> finished dead last, compiling little more than their own World
>> Factbook.

Not that I bleed for the showing by the CIA...

The problem with open source collection (I know because it's part of my
job) is 

1)separating data on original sites from derivative (and often posted
without the attached/surrounding details to make sure it is not changed
in the derivative posting

2)validating unusual or divergent data on other sites (Is this person a
genius or just a wild theory kamikaze?)   

3)deciding which site is correct when you get different answers to the
same questions - go look a the official Burma government site and the
dissident national front for democracy (the party that was elected in
but
never allowed to take power by the military led by the Nobel Peace Prize
winning daughter of the man who led Burma's drive for independence from
the UK.

Collecting it is USUALLY easy, validating and evaluating all that data
(and it's of marginal use if you are not sure how
accurate/precise/reliable it is...) now that's where the rubber meets
the
road.  Data overload is as bad as data dearth.

Gracias, Triphibious/Glenn
Triphibious Marines = Nektons.
Not all Frogs are French, or even Human!
Nektons, be all the Marine you can be!
Resistance is EVERYTHING!

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