Intellipedia – For Intelligence Officers, A Wiki Way To Connect Dots

Intellipedia, the intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, hummed in the aftermath of the Iranian presidential election in June, with personnel at myriad government agencies updating a page dedicated to tracking the disputed results. Similarly, a page established in November immediately after the terrorist attack in Mumbai provided intelligence analysts with a better understanding of the scope of the incident, as well as a forum to speculate on possible perpetrators.

“There were a number of things posted that were ahead of what was being reported in the press,” said Sean Dennehy, a CIA officer who helped establish the site.

Intellipedia is a collaborative online intelligence repository, and it runs counter to traditional reluctance in the intelligence community to the sharing of classified information. Indeed, it still meets with formidable resistance from many quarters of the 16 agencies that have access to the system.

But the site, which is available only to users with proper government clearance, has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006 and now averages more than 15,000 edits per day. It’s home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts.

“About everything that happens of significance, there’s an Intellipedia page on,” Dennehy said.

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NSA – National Security Agency Could Add 11,000 Workers

The National Security Agency is planning to double the size of its headquarters at Fort George G. Meade in an expansion slated to bring more than 11,000 workers to the Anne Arundel County military base.

Its plans are large enough to rival National Business Park, a 285-acre private development built by Corporate Office Properties Trust in Annapolis Junction. And for Fort Meade, it will generate nearly twice as many jobs as the Pentagon’s much-publicized Base Realignment and Closure plan, slated to bring an estimated 5,700 workers to the base.

The NSA wants to expand onto about 236 acres of land adjacent to its headquarters at Fort Meade — a plan that would comprise three phases and span 20 years. The agency now has about 2.6 million square feet at Fort Meade. Its first phase of construction is slated to include 1.8 million square feet for up to 6,500 government workers.

The secretive spy agency, which employs about 36,000 people and has a classified budget said to be in the billions of dollars, is being asked to take on an increasing amount of duties under the Obama administration.

via National Security Agency growth could add 11,000 workers at Fort Meade – Baltimore Business Journal:.

NSA E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns In Congress

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.

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Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said.

Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

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CIA, NSA Adopting Web 2.0 Strategies

While the United States intelligence community may have gotten a lot of publicity for its Wikipedia-like Intellipedia Web site, agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency are ramping up their use of other social and Web-inspired software as well. Read more

Low-Tech Terror Attack in Mumbai Could Spur Copycats in the West

The Mumbai attacks have prompted some Western officials to step up vigilance against the type of low-tech assault the 10 gunmen mounted last month.

Since the attacks in Mumbai, al Qaeda Web sites and chatrooms have lit up with aspiring militants urging more such attacks, according to the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group. One message cheered “the heroes” of the attack for making “the enemies suffer,” including the U.S., the U.K. and Israel.

Historically, the group accused in the attack, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has focused on furthering Pakistan’s claims to the Kashmir region, disputed with India. Although its messages have a strong anti-American component, U.S. officials have seen the group as a lesser counterterrorism priority.

But current and former intelligence officials say they are worried the Mumbai attacks may reflect a broadening of Lashkar’s interests, and that would-be jihadis may copy the approach of the Mumbai attackers, who carried out their assault on foot using little more than machine guns, explosives and cellphones. Al Qaeda’s resurgent base in Pakistan also provides opportunities for collaboration with groups such as Lashkar, officials said.

David Cohen, the head of intelligence for the New York Police Department and a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, said what used to be merely propaganda against the U.S. and Israel has now been “operationalized” by the Mumbai attacks. “It puts us on notice in a much more clear and direct way,” he added.

The NYPD has dispatched three officers to Mumbai to better understand the attacks because of concerns about copycats.

“It’s a very clear indication that we have the potential to be victimized by a group motivated by religious ideology that doesn’t use something sophisticated,” said John Cohen, a senior official in the Bush administration’s office for sharing information among intelligence agencies.

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U.S. Warned India of Potential Terror Attack – U.S. Connection Being Investigated

NSA Now Tracking Captured Phones, U.S. Connections.

Brian Ross and ABC News report U.S. intelligence agencies warned their Indian counterparts in mid-October of a potential attack “from the sea against hotels and business centers in Mumbai.

In addition,  U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking the phones and SIM cards recovered by Indian authorities from the Mumbai terrorists leading to a “treasure trove” of leads in Pakistan and several possible connections to the United States, officials say.

Officials say one of the cell phone SIM cards may have been purchased in the United States but would not provide any more details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.

The phones also include the same Thuraya satellite phone intercepted in November by the Indian spy agency RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing, which runs an extensive electronic intercept operation.
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