CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence

Here's a most interesting news item from InformationWeek magazine:

U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media. In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.

Is there that much intelligence at the YouTube site? Who knows. The Wall Street Journal also blogged about it and the Secrecy News post with a link to the CIA speech document. The WSJ article also highlighted the fact that other countries' intelligence agencies probably monitor phone and Internet communications, too.

There are a couple implications. First, it means that the intelligence community monitors other social networking sites, too. Second, it demonstrates that whatever information (e.g., blogs, journals, photos, etc.) consumers post online about themselves is online forever and may be analyzed in some country's government mainframe computer.

In an unrelated matter, a check of YouTube found that somebody posted a CIA recruitment video.