More than espionage
Al Qaeda's Christmas Day "underpants bomber" has again put discus - sions of intelligence policy and national security organizations, once relegated to obscure academic journals, squarely at dining room tables across Middle America.
Here's some food for thought: White House policymakers and Congress can help develop an increasingly robust national intelligence capacity by investing new money in the pursuit of a centralized open-source intelligence (OSINT) infrastructure.
Investment in centralized, programmatically managed open-source intelligence has been recommended by two major independent commissions as a needed area of doctrinal development and increased capacity for the U.S. national security community.
Among the top 10 recommendations of the Robb-Silberman Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was that the director of national intelligence (DNI) "should create an Open Source Directorate in the CIA to use the Internet and modern information processing tools to greatly enhance the availability of open source information to analysts, collectors, and users of intelligence."… Seguir leyendo »