There are two major points I want to make here and one minor personal point about myself to set out my biases first. One I have paranoid schizophrenia. There are two rules of thumb with this illness and delusions, one the person believes they are Jesus, two the person feels the CIA, KGB, Mosad, RCMP or place your own state police name here, agency are spying on them. I am this second type and it is only usually by avoid this topic that I do well. That said I spend the last part of my second BA in legal studies studying political criminal law including learning to be critical of the state security agendas. Now my points I wonder if the intelligence agents are reading open source computer code? This would seem to be a good idea given the back room nature of computer security programming in the Unix Linux secure computer paranoia mind set. Mind you that's my personal opinion of computer security geeks their over doing the security. Why is the inventor of PGP cool anyway? Therefore is open source code actually studied by open source intelligence analysts? Before you think I am just being cute or rigidly concrete in connecting the words open source in two contexts, consider that the effects of software can be harmful and socially significant. We all know Microsoft code(s) affect us and courts can open up this code. Will we keep a close eye on open source code? Many former computer students in the world and there are millions can read computer code. My second point is this... from being a long time opponent of big organizations and say something like the welfare payment system being handled by computers and the significant errors funny, absurd, and fatal that occur. In this case of social support systems I know that good information can save lives. Guardians, social workers, self help and other information brokers can help a welfare recipient with the computer systems. Also there is much written in computer ethics about computer error and safety. Thus if we consider reading a benign activity as I believe many academics may naturally do, is it really that safe to have a computer reading for our armed professionals? Just because the tool works is it really error free? What if these data gathering tools make mistakes? i/e did the swat team go to the wrong house because of some open source GIS that some CIA analyst read with the help of a computer that in error added two digits to the zip code? Closing with one more opinion 1984 was written by an intelligence officer for the British and taught as a view of the Soviet union in Canadian high school English class as the novel Animal Farm. But why would this term 1984 be of aid to the British? I think stuff by Orwell is just that propaganda but for the British way of life. Peter Timusk B.Math(2002) BA (2006) Tel: 001-613-729-8328 Community Informatics Practitioner Email: ptimusk@sympatico.ca Yahoo ID: crystal_computing Skype ID: peter.timusk ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nothing I write is intended to be representative of my employer, or our clients. Nor do I alone speak for my unions. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Feel free to learn more about me at www.crystalcomputing.net Computer ethics studies at www.webpagex.org blogs http://logbook.crystalcomputing.net <- computers http://notebook.webpagex.org <- school work On 5-Oct-06, at 12:33 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:
I seem to be missing something here. Of all of the things a government could do that would be objectionable, using tools to aggregate and help analyze open source intelligence surely cannot be that evil. I presume that you don't object to governments reading what others have to say about them--this isn't "mind reading," it's "reading." And while analysis of texts certainly requires interpretation by the researcher, I see no particular reason to believe that making use of computer tools to assist in that analysis would necessitate poorer interpretation. I seem to recall a discussion at some point that spoke in fairly positive terms about nVivo, another tool used in open source intelligence.
If you are worried that poorly thought out actions may result from good intelligence, that is another issue. It seems that there is a significant breakdown in the process of communicating intelligence analysis. But I think that comparisons to the Total Information Awareness project are extraordinarily counterproductive. I think making use published, open material is an important line of defense for any nation or police force. It is only a "thought crime" if the writers are persecuted for stating it. Otherwise, it's called "listening." Indeed, I see no reason they should limit their analysis to foreign newspapers.
Sure, I would love it if they would open up their analysis for public consumption. But besides the closed nature of the results, is there any reason that this should be different from text analysis systems being used to help people keep up on the web today. For example:
Google News: http://news.google.com/news Google Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html Technorati: http://www.technorati.com/pop/news/ Blogpulse: http://www.blogpulse.com/ Global Attention Profiles: http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman We Feel Fine: http://wefeelfine.org/
Not to mention the dozens of products designed to map texts (e.g, http://www.leximancer.com/gallery.html).
I'm not convinced that providing tools for a government to better understand public discourse is automatically a bad thing.
Alex
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