Do you use Facebook?

Ever get that feeling someone is looking over your shoulder…keeping an eye on you…?

Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of US National Intelligence for analysis, says a program called A-Space, a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, has been undergoing testing for months and launches officially for the nation’s entire intelligence community on September 22.

So put it on your calendar!

Spies will be able to meet under the protective umbrella of the new A-Space site to share data they’ve never been able to share before—like critical information and opinion about such things as al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea. And the government will be able to assess all the data so nothing is missed (like the “missed” e-mail that an FBI agent sent before September 11, 2001, warning of people learning to fly airplanes but not learning to land them). Yes, it was the 9/11 commission that recommended that new networks be created to facilitate the sharing of data across agencies to protect people’s lives.

But apparently participation in this “MySpace for analysts” will be voluntary (so covers won’t be blown).

So the CIA, FBI and The National Security Agency will be using this social-networking site that has the characteristics of Facebook. But only intelligence personnel with the proper security clearance, and a reason to be examining particular information, can access the site. Let’s face it, the creators of A-Space do not want it to be used by some future double agent to steal America’s 21st-century secrets.

But did you know that earlier this year the CIA used Facebook, for informational purposes, to advertise employment opportunities with the agency? (This is according to a CIA spokesman, George Little.) But some people thought the agency was monitoring members.

Wertheimer said. “We’re going to actually do patterns on the way people use A-Space.” Like when someone is using their credit card in a way they’ve never used it before, and it alerts so that maybe that credit card has been stolen.

And yes, analysts can collect friends on A-Space the way people can on MySpace and Facebook. But nobody outside the intelligence community will ever know—because they’re secret!

Now all A-Space needs to do is collect friends, or collaboration, from foreign intelligence agencies. But according to Mr. Wertheimer, those overseas folks are the most virulently against sharing information through an “intelligence library”.

Can’t we all play together nicely? And maybe experiment in ways that we have never experimented before? Look at the positives…better communication!

What do you think?

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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