Consumer Innovations to Inform Web Site for Spies

By Sam Diaz Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 25, 2007; D01

Government agents may soon find valuable information through an online-recommendation system like the one on Amazon.com: Spies who read this report, it might say, also found these reports useful.

That is one of several features the Office of the Director of National Intelligence might borrow from mainstream technology as it designs its new Web-based information-sharing system.

The DNI is working on a new system intended to "tunnel through" the 16 different intelligence-gathering agencies in hopes of streamlining data sharing, said Michael Wertheimer, DNI's assistant deputy director for analytic transformation and technology.

_________________________________________________________________________--

Nobody yet has been able to 'intelligently' explain why we have 16 agencies instead of two-- except for Congress' insatiable appetite for passing the buck and confusing creation with completion. To successfully complete an intelligence network, you simplify it--strip it down to its essentials and make it accountable.

The 16 agencies brought together under the leaky roof of Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security couldn't even find the water in New Orleans.

Which would merely be a 'government as usual' joke, if it weren't so deadly serious.

* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Homeland Security, check out Opinion-Columns.com