Sharing secrets

For the past several months I've been dabbling with Facebook, mostly to just better understand it.

One thing that has struck me is the platform and the ease of sharing information. Thus, I've wondered aloud why this, or something similar, couldn't be used inside corporate firewalls among groups of people who need to share information.

The U.S. government apparently agrees.

The Director of National Intelligence, in December, will open up something called A-Space, basically a Facebook or My Space for spies. (Link to Financial Times article here.)

An excerpt:

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of “MySpace for analysts” – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited.

Interesting, to say the least, that spies would want to share more info. But that's the point. Here's an opportunity for a community (the U.S. intelligence community) that needs to better share info to do just that.