NSA Joining Social Network For Intelligence Analysts

From The Baltimore Sun:

The super-secret National Security Agency, traditionally reluctant to share its code-breaking secrets, is joining a new, highly classified social network that links its analysts for the first time with thousands of colleagues at other U.S. intelligence agencies.

Gone are what used to be those rock-solid paradigms of intelligence: providing information only to those who need to know and limiting access to locked, specialized "compartments."

Until now, a Pentagon analyst working on Afghanistan, for instance, might not know about highly sensitive NSA intercepts of opium smugglers discussing payoffs to Taliban insurgents.

Read more ....

My Comment: On the one hand I am surprised that it took this long for the NSA to cobble together such a program. On the other hand, one has to worry that if there is one bad apple in the group, sensitive information will be passed on to the enemy.

I am sure that some accommodation will be found, but one should expect sensitive information to be passed on to those who should not receive this information. I would also expect journalists and bloggers to now become exposed to an enormous amount of information that would otherwise not be available.

Social networks by their nature are always exposed to numerous groups. I will expect the same with this one.