Project on Government Secrecy
Open source intelligence, how the government can learn from the tools of 2.0
Nancy Feraldi interviews Steven Aftergood on May 14, 2007
Steven Aftergood writes Secrecy News, an email newsletter and blog, for the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit national organization of scientists and engineers formed in 1945 by Manhattan Project veterans "who felt that scientists, engineers and other innovators had an ethical obligation to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on critical national decisions, especially pertaining to the technology they unleashed - the Atomic Bomb."
An electrical engineer by training Aftergood joined the FAS staff in 1989 as a research analyst and later became Director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Project on Government Secrecy. He counts among his successes obtaining budget record declassification in FOIA lawsuits against the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office.
Nancy Feraldi: Do you consider Secrecy News a crowdsourced environment?
Steven Aftergood: Random people discover what we are doing and contact me privately through emails or phone calls.
Q: How is the US government doing at crowdsourcing? Can we read anything positive into the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference being held in Washington next month?
A: A single conference does not signify a change in attitude, but it could lead to something new and interesting, much to their credit. It is too early to judge.
Q: What do you think about Wikileaks.org?
A: They reported in January they had a million documents to publish on their site and so far, have published only one
Q: What do you think about crowdsourcing in general? Is there wisdom in crowdsourcing?
A: It's a way of harnessing collective intelligence of the population so that we all can be smarter and better informed. You have your trivial gossipy formats vs. substantive.
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Steven thinks government's attempts at crowdsourcing are "not mature yet." He did mention the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI ) Open Source Conference being held in Washington, D.C. July 16-17, 2007, DNI Open Source Conference 2007: Expanding the Horizons. He views this "open source" attempt by government intelligence with "interest and curiosity," and believes that "a single conference does not signify a change in attitude, but it could lead to something new and interesting, much to their credit. It is too early to judge."
"The conference will raise awareness about open source and encourage information sharing among the Intelligence Community and its partners in academia, think tanks, private industry, and with federal, state, local and tribal entities and international partners. The two-day conference will host participants from local, national, and international organizations from both the public and private sector" (DNI, 2007).
(Edited by John Abell)
