CIA Getting Valuable Information From Blogs

A few months ago we found from the stat counter that we had a reader from the CIA at The Democratic Daily. It looks like we aren’t the only blog the CIA is looking at. The Washington Times reports that the CIA mines ‘rich’ content from blogs:

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

“A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

Naturally we are happy to share any information we have which will help the country with the CIA. Here’s a few things we know: Saddam had destroyed any meaningful WMD (but was bluffing his enemies into thinking he still had some nasty weapons). Saddam and bin Laden were enemies and unlikely to ever work together. Al Qaeda and Iran are the real problems in the middle east–and Bush has made both stronger. Humans evolved from simpler life forms, and intelligent design is junk science designed to sneak creationism into the class room. Global warming really is a problem. Health care can be provided far more economically thru many ways other than those supported by George Bush. Virtually everything Bush says is a lie. And finally, the identity of the worst president ever can be found on the cover of Rolling Stone.