Internet Giving Rise To "Citizen Spies" 93
reporter writes "According to a startling report by the Wall Street Journal, the Internet has empowered ordinary people to be part-time intelligence officers, uncovering secrets like military facilities and prison camps across the landscape of North Korea. The report states, '[Curtis] Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches. "It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin. More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.'"
Not _SPIES_, intel analysts (Score:5, Insightful)
For one thing, analysts aren't in hostile territory and subject to arrest.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? Security through obscurity has pretty well been written off. We used to identify Russian special-nuclear-material sites by looking for the buildings with 3-layer fences and sniper towers. Our sites are identifiable the same way. Solution? 3-layer fences, sniper towers, and undisclosed underground protection. You can no longer hide your facilities, you just protect them and keep anything super-sensitive under a closed roof in a building with no open windows.
best definition yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia: a disparate community of busybodies. Yep, pretty much the best definition I've heard.
But lets hope the quality of these citizen intelligence officers is vastly superior to the average wikipedian. Using wikipedia-based information might get you a fail mark, a libel suit, minor injuries, or a variety of other personal problems. However, using poor intelligence information might get us all nuked, or start a major war. (citation: see Iran, Weapons of Mass destruction, intelligence failure thereof)
And what of other "open" countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what kind of trouble you'd get in if you made a similarly detailed map of all military installations (secret or otherwise) in the US or the UK.
Considering the oproar over showing where schools, churches and Cheney's residence are, I wouldn't be surprised if it was more difficult to get it done for the US than for North Korea ...
Keep this story in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
And keep this story in mind the next time an "American" (they always turn out to be dual citizens) is arrested for spying in Iran or China - we don't know whether a US citizen has been doing some un-sanctioned spying on another country. Even if they're not on the CIA payroll, it could be business interests, it could be family ties, it could be a grudge, and after reading this story I realize it could just be flat out idle curiosity?
I'm not sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure that I want the same pool of people that believe in faces on Mars, and other hoaxes, interpreting photos of North Korea.