U.S. agencies set up YouTube for spies

WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- U.S. intelligence agencies have set up a series of secure Web sites on which analysts and other officials can post and view videos -- a YouTube for spies.

The initiative, dubbed iVideo, is part of an effort by U.S. intelligence chiefs to equip their staffs with Web 2.0 tools and other standard accoutrements of a 21st century workplace. It was discussed by the two CIA officials who shepherded it to fruition at a recent technology conference, reported by Federal Computer Week.

The magazine's reporting was independently confirmed to UPI by U.S. intelligence officials authorized to speak to the media.

According to the officials, Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, three sites exist at different classification levels: top secret, mainly used by intelligence agency staff; secret, also available to many Defense and State Department officials; and sensitive but unclassified, which is open to state, local and federal government employees and law enforcement officials more generally.

The iVideo sites are one of a series of innovations, like the widely reported Intellipedia -- a user-created and edited encyclopedia along the lines of the Web's Wikipedia -- being pushed to encourage more collaboration and creative thinking among staffs of the sprawling and occasionally fractious collection of agencies that insiders call the U.S. intelligence community.

Others include a photo-sharing application similar to Flickr, a tool for bookmarking Web pages that is similar to del.icio.us, and instant messaging and blogging software.

"Just like on the real Web, if you want to upload photos, you tend to go to Flickr. If you want to upload videos, you go to YouTube," Don Burke told FCW. "It's the same thing on the intelligence community networks now."

The officials said the iVideo sites already have hundreds of postings. "It's been pretty remarkable how people have gravitated to it, and it shows that there actually was a need for this capability," said Dennehy. "This is kind of grass-roots adoption."

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Shaun Waterman, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor