Intellipedia tests the shadow side of wikis

Last year I got an email from someone working in a US intelligence agency, saying that their centralised knowledge systems were hopeless for sharing intelligence about global terrorist threats, and that what was needed were internal blogs and wikis.
I wondered if it was for real, but my correspondent Matthew Burton turned out to be serious enough to get his ideas published in the CIA's journal. Now Matthew alerts me to a lengthy article on Open Source Spying in the New York Times citing his work and that of others promoting decentralised intelligence gathering. Apparently there's now an Intellipedia, a wiki that any intelligence employee with classified clearance can read and contribute to, and serious talk about blogs.
The article is fascinating in exploring the challenges of sharing sensitive data, and who in management is likely to be resistant or supportive. It has particular resonance with Lloyd Davis's observation that social media may work best in the shadow side of organisations. How much more shadowy can you get?
Understandably some people are now getting worried about their personal information floating around spy blogs or wikis. David Weinberger, fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, is quoted as saying:

I don’t want the N.S.A. passing on information about innocent Americans to local cops in San Diego. Those laws exist for good reasons.

I think this is a good one to toss into the Gurteen Forum where knowledge management experts are currently discussing the uses of blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools inside organisations, proactively facilitated by Ed Mitchell. As an aside, it is reminding me how well the old email list can work with this kind of care and attention.
Ed wrote recently on the issue of gaining acceptance of new tools:

Also along this line - one way of convincing management that it is worth adopting blogs/wikis is to find some clear case studies - successful and not - new technlogy isn't always worth adopting if it isn't right for the problem... so it's a case of identifying what types of problem a blog or a wiki or an RSS agregator would help solve perhaps?

Clearly worth taking a look a look across the pond.
Update: In a comment below Paul Diperna points to an article where he relates Intellipedia to the development of Wikipedia.

Comments

[Paul DiPerna]

Hi David,

Great post.. I think Thompson's article is a useful in-depth look at the utility of wiki's in government, and specifically for the Intel Community.

I don't know if this would be of interest here, but I recently wrote a short piece for the Washington Examiner on this topic.

The URL (a messy one) can be found doing Google News search on "Intellipedia".

Hope all is well in the UK,

Paul

[Dan McQuillan]

I think David Weinberger is right to be worried, especially in relation to Web2.0.
See, for example, the New Scientist article Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites or my blog post on the surveillance of social software.

However, everything has it's shadow side (as Jung would have pointed out) and i think the potential of Web2.0 for the positive defence of human rights probably outweighs the dangers. i hope to be posting more about these positive examples soon.

Dan