Social Web, Free Help For The Intelligence Community

Jeffrey Carr, the founder of Greylogic, a noted expert on cyber warfare and a longtime consultant to the United States Intelligence Community (IC), has a nifty new proposal to help the IC better connect the dots: this week, he launched a trial balloon -- called Grey Balloons -- on Twitter seeking volunteers who might spend a few hours per week, unpaid, to help intelligence agencies do their jobs. He calls it a "resource bank" for people with a variety of skills -- "software developers, linguistic researchers, computer scientists, artists, analysts, professors; all donating a certain number of hours (you decide how many) to assist if called."


In an e-mail to friends and colleagues, Carr wrote that "I know how I felt when I heard the President address this very unfortunate intelligence failure and ordered that improvements be made. I suspect a lot of you felt the same way - disappointed that it occurred and eager to assist in solving it."

So far, 146 people have signed up to follow the project @greyballoons on Twitter, or privately, via e-mail. Yesterday, Carr created a Grey Balloons group on LinkedIn.

"If we can get 1,000 people onboard, I think the ODNI will take it seriously, so please spread the word, and start to change how problems get solved in Washington DC," he writes.

So how will this work? Will volunteers need to be vetted to see if they pose security risks? Given the reluctance of the intelligence community to share even open source information (for fear that classified priorities be exposed), would the intelligence bureaucracy be willing to accept the help? If 1,000 smart people offer their services to the IC for free, could they possibly refuse?