Former Head of CIA Think Tank Talks Privacy, Technology 147
blackbearnh writes "Carmen Medina, until recently, helped run the analysis side of the house at the CIA. She also ran the agency's think tank, the Center for the Study of Intelligence. A self-proclaimed heretic, she has a number of controversial views about how we gather intelligence and how technology is changing the game. She talked to O'Reilly Radar about this and other topics, including the possible ways that intelligence analysis could be crowdsourced, why government technology procurement is so broken, and how the public may need to readjust its views on what things such as privacy mean. Medina said, 'Government is viewed as inefficient and wasteful by American citizens. I would argue that one of the reasons why that view has grown is that they're comparing the inefficiency of government to how they relate to their bank or to their airline. Interestingly enough, for private industry to provide that level of service, there are a lot of legacy privacy barriers that are being broken. Private industry is doing all sorts of analysis of you as a consumer to provide you better service and to let them make more profit. But the same consumer that's okay with private industry doing that is not okay, in a knee-jerk reaction, with government doing that. And yet, if government, because of this dynamic, continues not to be able to adopt modern transactional practices, then it's going to fall further behind the satisfaction curve.'"
Re:Provide services in exchange for privacy. (Score:5, Informative)
A big part of what they do is essentially a kind of journalism. Perhaps the solution to their problems AND the death of quality investigative journalism in America is to transform CIA into something akin to BBC News.
I think your suggestion for the CIA to get into the "journalism" business is about 50 years too late. Google "Operation Mockingbird".
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
--William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy
Re:Privacy and Government (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, kids.
That "America: love it or leave it" slogan is from the '60s. You youngsters are too green to have heard about it.
By the way: get off my lawn.
Re:Oh yea, IS it ? (Score:2, Informative)
Just scroll down until you see the $250,000. You know where to look for other examples.