PhotoDude.com

The big problem is volume of information. There is so much, that inevitibly some is marked as crap and discarded, while the remainder is considered valid. I think it is inherent that some valid data is thrown away as crap, while some crap is taken seriously. I don't think there is a perfect solution, and that there are going to be things that will be missed. I'm not saying however that the present situation can't be improved, just that it might be more difficult than it appears at first blush.

Visitors from Saudi Arabia would also be very interested in the blog you just suggested. It would be Number 1 on their Daypop too. Problem is, you could not read their Number 2, while they could read your Number 1. NeuroProsthesis News

RPD gets it right. It's the amount of information that's the problem and the problem of how to analyze the information. Much was also made of the fact that there aren't any real technical hurdles to climb. The United States government has access to the most advanced technology ever, but in the end, people have to make the threat assessment. And we need people "on the ground" that we can trust, however seedy their past is. Better the devil you know... Another problem is that blogs are "pull" content. Even if it were done on some sort of encrypted intranet (solving the problem noted by np), you'd still have to load up a browser to get the info. Since you can only have one site as your "home page", and if the Terror Blog isn't the "home page", you'd manually have to type in the URL or go through Favourites. I'm also not sure we're at the stage yet where people first check blogs then email. Email is still my number one priority. Hell, I've long given up on my employer's intranet. And everybody knows what email is. Can we expect the bureaucracy of the US to instantly understand the concept of a blog? I'm Canadian, and since Canada is largely considered a "soft target" in terms of large scale terrorism, we have a certain outsider-but-still-on-the-inside roll to play in intelligence. Which is nice, because I hear CSIS, our spy agency, is hiring.

You need to spend a decade or two within the culture of classified information and 'need to know'. What you suggest makes the very skin crawl.

So, George, you're saying the level of information sharing that went on prior to 9-11 is the way it should be forevermore? What's gone on in past decades may not be appropraite for what we face today. A blog or e-mail list may not be the way to do it, but the various alphabet agencies will have to find a way to share their goodies amongst each other, because the "need to know" is now larger than within one alphabet agency. The evidence of that is plenty clear already.

America has been at war with its enemies since a few years before 04 Jul 1776, and will be at war with those enemies forever. It is the nature of humans. While the loss of 3,000 civilians is tragic, it is not an extraordinary loss of life when compared to the sacrifices of Americans in past conflicts. The protection of sources and methods of intelligence is of the highest priority - and some of the enemies of America have been Americans in sensitive positions. Men such as the FBI's Pitts and Hannsen, and the CIA's Ames. This too is human nature. Compartmentilization, need to know, resilience, redundancy...not perfection. That is the formula for success in the long term.

Thanks for your thoughts, George. I don't totally disagree with you, and the ideas tossed about of a blog or mail-list are the type of dissemination that might well spread to mid and lower level "moles." However... "The protection of sources and methods of intelligence is of the highest priority" ...we seem to have encountered a circumstance where the protection of intelligence sources took priority over acting on the intelligence gathered. If the FBI Phoenix report had been included in the CIA's assessment in August, some of the dots might have been connected. Meanwhile, the INS is still issuing visas for long dead hijackers. I'm not part of the argument that more info should be shared with the public. I don't care to know what the FBI Phoenix report said, but I do care about whether George Tenet knows what it said. Compartmentalization is a tried and true method, but when all the information does is sit in its compartment, unshared, and not acted upon outside its origin, it has little worth. There's got to be a way to share this info at higher levels where the concern of compromise is lessened. And if the argument is made that compromise is always possible at any level, I have to wonder what the point of it all is: we've got important info, we just can't trust anybody enough to tell them.