Gazette - Arming intelligence with Web 2.0

COVER SECTION

By Michael Wertheimer Assistant Deputy Director
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, U.S.

It is easy to forget that the World Wide Web is just a teenager. In fact, it was a mere 15 years ago that the first web browser was introduced to the Internet. Today, 1.4 billion online users log onto the web each day — a revolution by any standard.

Many experts agree that the Internet is now in its second generation — a generation often referred to as Web 2.0. This second wave of the Internet relies more on users contributing to content, and is driving the Internet to a social network.

But Web 2.0 has also created new venues for illicit activities. From crime to terrorism, the Information Age delivers fearsome capabilities to those who would seek to do harm. Web 2.0 offers enticing opportunities to exploit technology for good or for ill. Understanding how these technologies can be used by adversaries is a significant challenge — a challenge that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) is pursuing with vigour.

The new intelligence environment

The IC consists of 16 federal agencies, offices and elements of organizations that are collectively responsible for gathering, analyzing and disseminating intelligence information in the United States. Like the law enforcement community, the IC recognizes that “business as usual” no longer applies in the current Web 2.0 environment.

Two years after launch, Intellipedia holds more than 330,000 pages and boasts 42,204 registered users and approximately 135,000 readers.

Mike McConnell, U.S. Director of National Intelligence and head of the IC, describes web-savvy adversaries as follows: “These new actors blur the traditional distinctions between foreign and domestic, intelligence-related and operational, strategic and tactical.

” How the IC operates in this context — today and for every day after — is critically important and requires creative problem solving, particularly given a number of other nettlesome challenges:

• A very young analytic workforce, 60 per cent of whom were hired after 9/11
• Diverse and voluminous data that tends to overwhelm analysts
• Aging information technology systems that cannot support sophisticated tools
• Traditional analytic techniques, perfected for the world of nation-states, that founder in the face of non-state actors
• An increasing tendency to subject analytic judgments to public exposure and scrutiny

The IC is beginning to address these challenges through exciting initiatives aimed at bringing the power of information-sharing and collaboration to intelligence analysis. Led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the IC is drawing on the lessons of Web 2.0 to create social networks, collaboratively generate knowledge, and empower a young and enthusiastic workforce.

“ODNI is pulling the levers of power to reform our intelligence community,” says Dr. Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. “This isn’t glamorous work. It isn’t easily distinguishable to those outside the community, but more than anything else, this is the work that needs to get done.”

Two projects exemplify the IC’s future direction: Intellipedia and A-Space. While it is tempting to think of these as new tools, ODNI thinks of them more as game-changing initiatives — new ways to work and do business — that will radically broaden intelligence work.

A new way to wiki

The seventh most popular site on the Internet is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Unlike conventional encyclopedias, Wikipedia is written entirely by volunteer contributors who freely edit and author articles as a collective, achieving accuracy rates that rival peer-reviewed, professionally edited products.

According to Dr. Thomas Fingar, the ODNI Deputy Director of Analysis, Wikipedia processes are “an absolutely innate approach” for the IC’s younger workforce — the “digital generation” that simultaneously reads e-mail, talks on the phone, watches television, and has a conversation while linked with people around the world. But for the rest of the IC, says Fingar, the Wikipedia approach “is somewhere between heretical and previously deemed impossible.”

In April 2006, the IC officially launched Intellipedia, its own collaborative system to connect analysts, working groups, collectors, experts, data and knowledge. Like Wikipedia, Intellipedia enables users to post, edit and enhance articles. Unlike Wikipedia, all contributors are accountable — there is no anonymity. Furthermore, Intellipedia operates at three classification levels, permitting users from across the IC and law enforcement communities to access and contribute to it.

Creating Intellipedia was easy because it uses MediaWiki – the same software used by Wikipedia – which is freely available. The cost was very low and remains so. The resistance was not particularly strong because Intellipedia was a new capability and threatened no existing processes.

Two years after launch, Intellipedia holds more than 330,000 pages and boasts 42,204 registered users (who cross all demographics) and approximately 135,000 readers. The growth has been nothing short of spectacular. Intellipedia reached the million-edit mark two months earlier than it took Wikipedia to reach the same point.

But Intellipedia is more than a repository of information — it is evolving into a tool that enables intelligence officers around the world to analyze crises as they unfold. At a time when CNN fills the airwaves with fast-breaking news and citizens watch scrolling news feeds at the bottom of their computer screens, Intellipedia is emerging as a powerful tool to share information and analyze global incidents in near-real time.

Political officers at an overseas embassy can easily post breaking news, alerting geospatial intelligence analysts, who then share updated maps with layers of information, and military analysts, who examine and report troop levels and capabilities. Analysts from across the IC are starting to use Intellipedia to fuse their analyses instead of publishing myriad independent reports from their home agencies. For example, in 2006, a small two-seater plane crashed into a Manhattan building. Was it a terrorist incident or an accident? Within 20 minutes of the crash, an analyst created an Intellipedia page, which was edited 80 times in the next two hours by members of nine different intelligence agencies. They collaborated and rapidly concluded that the collision was an accident. The speed, thoroughness and multi-disciplinary nature of the analysis were unprecedented.

The next big idea

Intelligence analysts demand a working environment that gives them unfettered access to the best expertise — regardless of where it resides — and allows them to investigate, discover and explore new ways to perform analysis. Building on the momentum created by Intellipedia, ODNI is piloting a tool called A-Space (Analysis Space) that will meet these needs.

Set for launch this fall, A-Space complements Intellipedia and takes another step towards a true World Wide Web for analysts by providing them with a new environment in which to work. For the first time, analysts will have common access to documents and information several levels above top secret — including databases residing in agencies other than their own. Because A-Space rigorously enforces its entrance requirements to include specific security clearances, it will become a trusted environment for all IC analysts.

A-Space will also provide the shortest, fastest path to discovering IC expertise and emerging intelligence insights, allowing analysts to collaborate early and often. Some have likened A-Space to Facebook for the IC. While A-Space does have a social networking function that allows analysts to post profiles detailing their areas of past and current expertise, it is much more than that.

For example, IC analysts are notorious for organizing their notes on their individual computer desktops, making it difficult to share insights with others. With A-Space, analysts will be able to share their personal “file folders” through a secure “file cabinet.” They can create common work spaces supported by instant messaging, shared documents, and RSS feeds. The IC will be able to virtually “swarm” to tackle intelligence questions.

As time passes, IC analysts will discover and invent previously unimaginable uses for Intellipedia and A-Space, ultimately shaping the future of the intelligence business. Intellipedia and A-Space are precursors for the day when Web 2.0 denizens will find themselves stunned by the intelligence community’s agility, imagination and effectiveness on the World Wide Web.