IT at the CIA 314
neocon writes "The current issue of the CIA's Studies in Intelligence (unclassified edition, natch) has
an article on the state
of IT within the CIA, titled 'Failing to Keep Up With the Information Revolution', which
looks at how the agency has fared in staying up to date both with information security needs
and with promising new technologies."
What the CIA needs: (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like your typical govt agency (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes an org nimble is when they listen to the people who actually dig the trenches. There is no difference in this case, between the CIA, and say, GM.
They are lying (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a plug for more resources. Do you really believe they would publish this if it was true.
Today Sig at /.
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you. -- Nietzsche
is uncanny prescient.
Re:What the CIA needs: (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, there's a lot more to technical assets than just spy satellites and evesdropping on phone calls. Specifically, the intelligence community needs to concentrate on technologies that will let them "know what they know", especially in the face of an exponential amount of available data.
Example: Knowing that a terrorist is about to strike and knowing who and where they are is useless if one person knows about the threat, one person knows who the terrorist is and the location is in some obscure database (which is pretty much what happened on 9-11). It's only when that information is brought together that it becomes useful.
Again, however, the CIA has dropped the ball on human assets in recent years, mostly because they (and the people who fund them) lacked the imagination to envision the new threats in the post-Soviet era. Hopefully, this is something that's being corrected as we speak.
Way off base (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the CIA needs: (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're qualified to make that assessment how exactly?
Not Exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
While the intelligence community did indeed have a lack of vision with post-Soviet threats, the biggest reason for the dropoff in human assets was a combonation of over-reliance on gee-whiz technologies, like satellite surveilance, and just plain El-Cheapo budgeting on the part of Congress. Basically, after 1991, the attitude was "what do we need spies for? We've got satellites now". After September 11th, when the media was ravaging the CIA for not preventing the attacks, Tom Clancy was interviewed, and his comments were right on the ball. He basically said "Look, we castrated the CIA, and now you're surprised that the agency is ineffective?". That barb was aimed especially at media members and Congressmen that were in such a hurry to save money by cutting personnel.
Presentation by CSIS dude (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:firewall? we don't need no stinkin' firewall! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems better than a firewall to me. They can't hack you if you're not on the network. Isolated networks are always more secure than public ones, as long as the location they are at is physically secure and trust me, places like CSIS, CSE (our NSA) and the Mounties are VERY secure.
Besides, your "friend" could lose his job if he told you what firewall they use on their public facing networks....
"Military Intelligence" is an oxymoron (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with the poster down the page who opined that what the CIA needs is more people in the field. Look around the typical IT department & ask yourself, "Are these geeks the kind of folks I want providing vital information to the guys who have their fingers on the nuclear button?"
It's pretty obvious -- regardless of your position on operation Iraqi "Freedom" -- that electronic surveillance is not very reliable without plenty of dirty on-the-ground spying. Another way to put it is "Where are all those WMDs?" We saw the "pictures"...
not clear on the concept (Score:5, Insightful)
He dismisses the security concerns that prevent a lot of technology deployment as risk elimination rather than risk management, and says that this attitude hurts IT deployment within the CIA. The thing is, he says this without understanding that the CIA's risk profile is *totally* different from a business risk profile. The CIA can not take risks that a business can, as lives, not dollars, are at stake in the work they do. Any actual security consultant who made that mistake would (should) be fired on the spot.
Granted, it sounds like his other recommendations (streamlining procurement, merging different IT groups within the CIA) are reasonable, but as a security person, that first paragraph just set me off.
Re:Sounds like your typical govt agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Working in a big corporate organization, I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly. You can see a million little bureaucratic failings in something like the CIA or the FBI, and they'll remind you of stuff the senior director at your company once did. Colleen Rowley's memo read like my dang diary -- the way they wouldn't even try for a warrant except under the circumstances they were accustomed to was sooo very typical, and the subsequent promotion of the higher-up who wouldn't pursue Moussaui was dead-on corporate America.
(Makes me wonder why we talk so much about electing people who have business experience leading these enormous companies to public office... The CEO of United Airlines is as out-of-touch with the world of cause and effect as anyone out there.)
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:5, Insightful)
1983 Marxist revolt in Granada missed
1989 Czech border reforms missed
1989 E. Germany fall missed
1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait missed
1991 Coup attempt in USSR missed
1992-94 Islamists in Somalia missed
1993 Bombing of WTC missed
1998 African Embassy bombings missed
1999 Attempt on DDG Sullivans missed
2000 Bombing of Cole missed
2001 WTC/Pentagon missed
Of course, it it always easier to look at the flaws of something rather that the strengths in the same area. How many things did they not 'miss' and actually have an unskilled civilian populace know about it?
Not a fair accounting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that CIA can't publicly talk about their successes much, for fear of jeapordizing personnel or methods. And even when they DO publicly make accurate predictions, often they're ignored.
The perfect example of this happened in 1983. The CIA released a report called "Terminal Giants". It was either ignored or written off as "Reagan-esque right wing propoganda" by the media and leftist politicians. The prediction of the report? That the USSR's economy was dying because of excessive military spending, and that the Soviet Union could collapse within ten years.
Nobody believed them. And to this day, CIA still doesn't get credit for that prediction.
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened at the millenium celebrations?
You can only compile a list of the misses, not hits. You have absolutely no idea what they've prevented.
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:5, Insightful)
1989 Czech border reforms missed
1989 E. Germany fall missed
1991 Coup attempt in USSR missed
I don't know about the rest of the list, but those listed above were not 'missed'. The CIA was dead on in thier prediction of these events. Wether or not the leaders in charge heeded these assessments is another story.
Plus, you'll never hear of the successes. CIA foils a bomb plot, bombing never happens, thus news never covers the event. So how sure are you that the CIA is ineffective?
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:4, Insightful)
The conflict in Afghanistan was revolutionary because of CIA. They were there before any of the armed forces and they basically won the war by bribing/ persuading different fraction to join up against the Taliban.
Also, has it occured to you that in the set of failed and successful CIA activities there is an extreme bias in which ones you ever hear about?
Tor
Re:What the CIA needs: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not an anecdote, but an old joke, I think. And there's some truth to it. But that truth cuts both ways. Americans and Brits expend great effort to find out what the bore dimension is. The French are satisfied to learn what a drunken Russian officer says it is. That's not the same thing at all.
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:not clear on the concept (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing (Score:4, Insightful)
the armed forces and they basically won the war by bribing/ persuading different fraction to
join up against the Taliban.
At the end of the day, they were just cleaning up the mess they created in the first place.
Risk management still applies (Score:3, Insightful)
Risk management is still the right way to do this - it's just that the risks on both sides of the ledger can sometimes be much higher.