CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs - The Washington Times

CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs - The Washington Times:

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

'A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else,' Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

I, for one, welcome our self-spying overlords. Let it be known that not since even President Nixon has one administration looked unsuccessfully inward for the cause of its problems.

Would that it could look a little closer to home, perhaps into its own livingrooms and bedrooms, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it.

Here's some Insight, sir: Stop spying on your own citizens in violation of their rights. Stop trying to throw your national might around. Educate your people and give them enough self-respect and personal accountability that they need no longer huddle in their bathrooms with their pistols drawn and safeties off. Hold one fair election -- just one. Give your sick people real medical care and stop dragging us down into your greedy, bankrupt system. Finally, sir, see what you are looking at: a nation in need of the kind of development your behaviour inhibits.

Make America the envy of all other nations again.