WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The CIA reportedly plans to expand a wing that currently translates foreign language broadcasts and documents to include a wide variety of data mining.
Time magazine says Director Porter Goss will launch the unit by Oct. 1.
The "open source" unit will search through public data such as research articles, Web sites and phone books in order to better investigate suspects.
What looks like a $100 million budget for the expanded unit will be monitored by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte.
Critics of the CIA welcome the move, saying the agency has been too reliant on secret operation reports and failed to see the benefit of searching through open source items like the speeches of fundamentalists, Time said.
