United States - Espionage

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> The intelligence community underestimates the massive amounts

> On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 22:07:09 -0400" <deboe@quixnet.net> writes:

Not that I bleed for the showing by the CIA...

The problem with open source collection (I know because it's part of my job)
is

1)separating data on original sites from derivative (and often posted
without the attached/surrounding details to make sure it is not changed
in the derivative posting

2)validating unusual or divergent data on other sites (Is this person a genius
or just a wild theory kamikaze?)

3)deciding which site is correct when you get different answers to the
same questions - go look a the official Burma government site and the
dissident national front for democracy (the party that was elected in but
never allowed to take power by the military led by the Nobel Peace Prize
winning daughter of the man who led Burma's drive for independence from the
UK.

Collecting it is USUALLY easy, validating and evaluating all that data (and
it's of marginal use if you are not sure how
accurate/precise/reliable it is...) now that's where the rubber meets
the road. Data overload is as bad as data dearth.

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 21:43:30 EDT, Glenn m wilson <triphibious@juno.com> wrote:

> Not that I bleed for the showing by the CIA...

God, tell me about it. I've been researching stuff for my web site. I have
been to a number of American Civil War battlefields, and I decided to post
campaign and battle information along with the pictures. I went looking for
some data on the web, as it was faster when I didn't have my sourcebooks near
me. The amount of good information is quite high. The amount of WRONG or just
mildly inaccurate information is equally high. The web has a lot of
information, but it's hard to know what to trust.