I want to take a moment to give a warm welcome to our newest readers, the Open Source Center of the Central Intelligence Agency. Welcome to Homeland Stupidity!
Actually, they aren’t the newest readers; they’ve been around reading here for several months now. But now I can finally tell you who they are, what they do and why they’re reading this site.
The OSC is responsible for gathering intelligence from the Internet, newspapers, magazines, and other unclassified sources of information worldwide. Its analyses are disseminated to intelligence customers ranging all the way from the President to local police departments.
Among other sources, the OSC is aggressively reading and monitoring weblogs. So now, the things you and I say online could ultimately wind up in the Oval Office and influence Presidential decision making.
Well, ideally. In practice, the White House is almost never going to read your individual posts for themselves (though it could happen; it’s happened here before). What generally happens in practice is an intelligence analyst at the OSC will read several sources of information on a given topic, write a report, and that report will be shared with the appropriate government agencies. It may even be shared with the White House in the President’s daily intelligence briefing.
Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center’s creation in November.
“We’re certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer,” said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government’s nonsecret intelligence in December.
“I can’t get into detail of what, but I’ll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president’s daily brief has gone up rather significantly,” Mr. Jardines said. “There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we’ve been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community.”
[OSC Director Douglas J.] Naquin said recent OSC successes have included the discovery of a technology advance in a foreign country. Also, most data on avian flu outbreaks come from open sources, he said.
“Have we got coups out of it? Close to it,” Mr. Naquin said. “But certainly we’ve had more insight than we’ve ever had before.” — Washington Times
Unfortunately, I’m fresh out of insights today, but hopefully I’ll get some in tomorrow’s shipment.
Thanks to Matt Parker for the news tip.
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Matt Parker
Apr 19, 2006
You’re Welcome.
The question is – now that we know they’re listening. What are we going to say that could change the world.
Peace,
Matt
J. Bruno
Apr 19, 2006
Two years from now great strides in U.S. intelligence will be made when the government learns how enclose search terms in quotes. It will be the greatest revolution in government intel. since the CIA’s discovery of Google.
Oppressed by Bush
Apr 20, 2006
Hi CIA people! :) How’s the coffee? :) I’m happy as long as you don’t take away what little we have left (blogs) to express ourselves–You risk enslaving yourselves if you do.
So do you CIA guys know why Bush persistently betrays our country and his powers continue to go unchecked? Don’t get me wrong though, I love democracy.
Mr. Hampton,
I think that ioerror.us and hammeroftruth.com websites are great! Thanks for all the hard work and thanks for painfully hammering reality into my thick skull, about where our country is headed.
I’m happy to inform you that I have been sober from the “news media†now for more than six months. :D
Apr 20, 2006
The Jawa Report
Aaron Brazell
Apr 20, 2006
Heh…. Are they in your referrer logs? Do the UAs show up as spider.osc.cia.gov or something to that effect? :)
I know I have at least one regular reader at the NSA but then I live 20 mins from there and know countless people who work there.
Michael Hampton
Apr 20, 2006
Get a large enough body of server access logs, and you too will almost certainly find them if you’ve written anything that the government might be interested in reading.
Fortunately, I have a large enough body, and perhaps it’s time for a followup post (and perhaps you should read the previous one that I linked to).
Aaron Brazell
Apr 20, 2006
I didn’t read your other posting until just now. That’s hilarious!!
Jul 07, 2006
Air Force to begin watching blogs - Homeland Stupidity
Softail
Oct 17, 2007
You really think you are even worth a read by the CIA?
Y’all are pretentious self-absorbed geeks who have no life other than to sit around an banter “If I ran the world” drivel that is about as productive as pissing into the wind.
You are great at criticizing any ideas brought forth by your Government but woefully inept at actually DOING anything about it. Oh, let me guess, you “Vote” so you can bitch. Why don’t you get involved in the “Evil Empire” that you claim is the US Government and start changing things?
Come on, are there no Luke Skywalkers amongst you brainiac nerds?
Pathetic Dweebs.
Don’t bitch about about it….Get involved. And BLOGGING doesn’t count.
btw…just because someone in a Government Agency read your blog doesn’t mean they think you are of interest. It was probably somebody who was bored while eating lunch…surfing the net. But that would be to big a blow to your egos now wouldn’t it?
Michael Hampton
Oct 17, 2007
Hey, you’re a government employee, and you’re reading!
And, yes, certain government employees do think I’m of interest. That’s why they’ve been paying close attention to this site for months, sending me threatening messages, and visiting me in person to harass and intimidate me. (This, of course, blew up in their faces.)