Common Sense

That we are all doomed?

You may have missed the recent story — these days the mainstream media seems more arbitrary than ever about what news it deems important — but it seems that the CIA has begun data mining the blogosphere in search of new trends, intelligence and early indicators of emerging international problems.

The story, as reported in The Washington Times by Bill Gertz, notes that the CIA’s newly created Open Source Center — even the name shows that the Company is getting pretty computer hip — has “recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content,” according to the Washington Times story.

OK, number one, since when is the ABC News Business page not part of the mainstream news? And number two, I can save the CIA tons of time and money: not very.

With the exception of a few blogs (like this one and all of my friends in the Texas Progressive Alliance), most blogs are either copying what we see in the mainstream media, or printing rumors that we hear from our sources. There is very little “reporting” in any sense from bloggers. What blogging offers is commentary and explanation of the day’s news stories.

Not exactly what one would deem valuable intelligence, at least not in the view of the CIA. But here we are, talking about them reading my prolific porn posting as if national security depended on it.