Secret service goes online

A number of people have been asking me about the business value of blogging, social networking sites and other online tools. Last week The Financial Times ran a front-page story which shows that not only businesses but also the public sector understand the benefits of digital communications: US intelligence agencies will launch a portal modelled on social networking sites!

No, government secrets will not be available to the general public. The US intelligence units plan to have an internal communications tool similar in its architecture to Facebook and MySpace, the two most popular social networking websites. This is an obvious acknowledgement that social sites have business application even in such areas as secret service.

The Financial Times reports that the new tool, A-Space, (AgentSpace? AnalystSpace?) will help share information among all the 16 US intelligence agencies. It will be a kind of MySpace for secret service officers. No doubt, this move is not greeted by all spies and secret agents as it involves the risk of sensible information being taken over by counter-intelligence and disclosure of undercover agents. Well, these guys should know better in what kind of business they are and what risks that involves. :)

Interestingly, the chief executives of MySpace and Facebook have been invited to participate at a conference in September to discuss the new system to be launched by the American intelligence in December.

I'd like to participate at such a conference. At least to meet the two guys, not to mention the curiosity of seeing American 007's in flesh. :)

Scottish police info box, Edinburgh, April 2007. Photo by Giedrius CP

Ideavirus

Everything starts from a thought or an idea. Any human action is usually conceived in one's brain and only then implemented. The way ideas travel sometimes makes us wonder.

Have you ever had this feeling that ideas "float" in the air? You may have met people who are considering the same ideas, projects and ventures as you? I'm amazed how different people may have the same ideas.

On a brief visit to New York City last summer, I spotted a strange figure in the Financial District. It was a monstrous rat that a group of people were marching around (pictured below). It turned out to be protesters who were unhappy about the way their employer treated them (low pay, long working hours?) and they campaigned in front of the offices of the ill-behaving company. That looked like an interesting way of attracting public attention to the issue.

A year or so ago a debt collection company in Lithuania used the character of a rabbit to draw public (and media) attention to companies that did not pay their bills in due time. A person dressed like a rabbit with a board signed "I'm indebted" stood by the offices of companies that wouldn't settle their accounts with suppliers.

The two campaigns - the American rat for bad employers and the Lithuanian rabbit for serial debtors - look very similar in terms of the PR tools employed. Ideas indeed travel in mysterious ways.

Rat in New York City, July 2006. Photo by Erlendas G.