Even spies can benefit from the wisdom of communities

It appears that even the American Intelligence community feels the need to contact old school friends and connect with glamour models, as it’s set to launch A-Space, a Myspace style community, according to the Financial Times.

“Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of “MySpace for analysts” – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited.”

Obviously they haven’t used Myspace, or seen the emergence of Facebook as the preferred social network of those that actually use them for communication, rather than spamming. I’d love to be able to search on the ‘CIA’ network on Facebook, or maybe the ‘Classified’ network.
I’d also suggest they’ll need to be very careful about security, but the comedian in me can only imagine how it’ll look to have Uncle Sam as your first A-Space friend, rather than Tom.

I just hope they don’t get too much criticism for building a ‘walled garden’.