Articles

MySpace for Spies (OMG!)

August 22nd, 2007 by Brian McDonough

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That’s right, there’s going to be a MySpace for spies. And you thought getting an early invite to Gmail was a status symbol.

The U.S. intelligence community is going to launch “A-Space” before the end of the year, according to an article from the Financial Times:

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service.

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Naturally, the arrival of the CIA and its related mystery agencies to the flashpoint technology of Web 2.0 will change the nature of intelligence work. Mostly, we think the quality of spelling in top secret reports will nose dive. and NSA operatives will totally be hooking up more. And promoting their garage bands. Oh, and everyone will want to have really famous foreign spies prominently in their friends lists. But most importantly, it’s only a matter of time before the spies of Generation Whatever-Letter-We’re-On display the same 4 am, Mountain Dew-addled humor of their lower-security-clearance brethren.

To wit: Where bored teenagers not doing their trig homework or surfing porn created LOLcats, bored spies not finding Osama bin Laden or surfing porn will need … LOLspies. Though crude even by LOLcats standards, Badmouth offers here a few pioneering efforts. lolspies-hayden.JPG We, whenever our boss wasn’t in eyeline of our monitor, furtively repurposed the Bond and Mission Impossible franchises. Actual spy hipsters will use less recognizable faces, such as Aldrich Ames and that Russian guy who got all radioactive. But in the spirit of verisimilitude, we took a shot at the official portrait of CIA director Michael Hayden. (If we don’t get fired by the end of the day, we’ll be in Guantanamo by the end of the week.)

Sexy fake spies are more fun, anyway. We think the real untapped potential is in appropriated Jennifer Garner pictures.

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21 Responses to “MySpace for Spies (OMG!)”

  1. links from Technoratirecently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service. Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian McDonough says, “I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!”Link.

  2. Crunchy says:

    links from TechnoratiXeni Jardin:[IMG]The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes”? Anyway, snip:

  3. links from TechnoratiMySpace for Spies: A-Space[IMG]The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes”? Anyway, snip:

  4. 15 december says:

    links from TechnoratiMySpace for Spies (OMG!)

  5. links from TechnoratiXeni Jardin:[IMG]The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes

  6. Kramer auto Pingback[...] MySpace for Spies: A-Space The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes”? Anyway, snip: The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (…)Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service. Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian McDonough says, “I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!” Link. [...]

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  8. rawdog says:

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Xeni Jardin: The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes”? Anyway, snip: The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (…)Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service. Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian says, “I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!” Link. [...]

  9. [...] Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian says, “I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!” Link. [...]

  10. Kramer auto Pingback[...] Aug. 22nd, 2007 at 7:14 PM boingboing_nethttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/147101516/myspace_for_spies_as.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/22/myspace_for_spies_as.htmlXeni Jardin: The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community — a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as “a-holes”? Anyway, snip: The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (…)Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service. Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian says, “I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!” Link. [...]

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