Britain: Intelligence Agencies Urged to Track Social Media Sites More Closely
January 29th, 2011This is ridiculous.
The implications of the Internet for radical political movements were well known to the Pentagon at least as far back as 1995 (Strategic Assessment: The Internet, 1995). Britain and the U.S. are joined at the hip. So, are we expected to believe that this is somehow news to the British Intelligence establishment, and that the monitoring hasn’t been happening the entire time?
Tell me another one.
Via: BBC:
Intelligence agencies should track social networking sites more closely, the UK’s top civil servant has said.
Sir Gus O’Donnell told the Iraq inquiry that events in Egypt, where protests against the government are escalating, showed the value of “open source” intelligence as a barometer of opinion.
The issue would be examined as part of a review of government intelligence “machinery” due by the summer, he said.
But he said any information gathered must, above all, be “reliable”.
Sir Gus, who has been cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service since 2005, was questioned about the UK’s current intelligence-gathering methods during his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 Iraq invasion.
He was asked whether the Joint Intelligence Committee – which assesses raw material picked up by intelligence officers in the field and presents it to ministers – was able to “pick up” on popular protests organised through Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
“When you look at what is happening, as we speak, in Egypt… the use of the internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements develop, this is a different world,” he said. “We need to be tied in much more to that sort of world.”
Sir Gus, who attends weekly meetings of the National Security Council established by David Cameron, suggested the UK needed to go a “bit further” in this area to get a fuller picture of fast-moving, volatile situations when they emerge.
