SECRECY IS GENERALLY WORTHLESS:

Secret Information In Plain Sight (CBS, Jan. 10, 2006)

Inside CIA headquarters, a high-tech monitoring operation scores an intelligence coup, obtaining a close-up photo of an Iranian nuclear facility.

The source: an Iranian blog discovered in the vast labyrinth of the Internet, CBS News correspondent David Martin reports.

Elliot Jardines is this United States' first director for open source intelligence, an unusual job in a business that usually keeps its sources secret.

For Jardines, useful intelligence lies in plain sight.

"Pretty much anything we need is available through open sources," Jardines says.

Despite the secrecy most intelligence operations work under and the necessity to steal information from foreign governments, Jardines' department is different because the information his team finds is publicly available.

Jardines adds that Web pages, books, periodicals, TV news, radio, blogs, graffiti and bumper stickers yield useful intelligence.

Not only is everything they need to know available from open sources, but nearly everything they think they know should be open source so that everyone can critique it. A few active intercept programs could be kept quiet while they're producing worthwhile intelligence--like the NAS taps--but after a while put that stuff on-line too.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2006 11:11 PM