The open source intelligence revolution is coming – ex CIA spy

I think an analogy to alchemy is very apt in this situation. Prior to the scientific revolution alchemy was always practiced in secrecy. Techniques for finding out about the world were guild secrets and hidden away. Many early scientists would almost certainly have been classified as alchemists in their own times. With the advent of the scientific revolution (which in part necessitated a political change) the 'methods' of the alchemists could now be openly discussed and tested in public. How to measure or name something became a matter of open debate and experimentation, and the rest is history.

Gathering "intelligence" is no different than making any other measurement about the world, economists do it all the time. Right now intelligence agencies are operating in the alchemist mode, hoarding their methods and hiding them from view to protect themselves, in this case form inquisitions that might be led by various governments if they discovered how poorly vetted and reviewed some of these data collection techniques really were ("How do you know that eating this herb will make me better?" "Well...").

I think the argument made by Steele is spot on in the sense that as our world is now monstrously complex, we MUST subject our data gathering methodology to rigorous and public review or we will flounder. Not only that but if we take the analogy to alchemy seriously then perhaps we will see a revolution not unlike the one witnessed around about the latter half of the 1600s.

tl;dr Current intelligence agencies are alchemists and what we need more of is science.

This is funny coming right after this: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/

Technology is concentrating wealth, not spreading it.

Letting folks download some source code won't help; that's not where the value is.

Robert David Steele has been talking about the value of open source intelligence for many years, and has given several fascinating talks at hacker conferences.

Hackers on Planet Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txugDFRVbeQ

Gnomedex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU

Ok, what I got from that (and to be honest I didn't give it a close read, so its fair to say that this is completely wrong) was that the subject of this article, Robert David Steele (which strangely was the name I took for a fictional secret agent), is an avid reader but not a very discriminating one. And by that I mean there seems to be little in the way of systemic analysis of the validity of what he reads or in the application of various bits toward testable hypothesis in an effort to deduce what is real and what is fanciful. Almost a caricature of the Robert Redford character from "3 Days of the Condor."

In this context "Open Source" means publicly available (as in published or broadcast), not some variant of copyleft.

Just FIY, "Open Source" in spy-speak is not typically talking about software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence

In other words the title is not about open source software revolutionizing intelligence agencies. It is about something else.

Commoditisation of everything is attempt to place markets / exchanges in the market and so introduce efficiencies in allocation of resources. This is hard to argue as a bad thing, and hard to argue as a recent thing too.

In an open source world an exchange is an excellent approach to openly finding a price for a commodity, and so the radicalism espoused might be more effective if it focused on improving intelligence about the world not blaming "finance" for something that is simply regulatory capture not evil plans

Since when did the opinions (half-baked ones in this case) of the CIA count for anything at the guardian?

It's interesting how as long as someone is saying something you want to hear is doesn't matter who they are but once they start saying thing you don't like you immediately want to attack the messenger. This is one of the many weaknesses of human thought.

It seems pretty obvious to me that capital can't continue to concentrate indefinitely. And there is a limit to what people will tolerate from those in power. Is this guy right and we are about at the limits and ready to make real changes? I don't know. But... interesting take on the situation.

I've seen this guy in person before. He's just a conspiracy nut. Do not give him any more attention than he deserves, which is zero.

Can anyone suggest a less baity title?

Edit: we took out "it will conquer the 1%" and added "intelligence" to make it clear that he's not talking about software.