CIA Taps the Blogosphere

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Bloggers, rejoice! You have been ridiculed by the media, ignored by ombudsmen and -women, shunned and scorned, accused of being nothing more than a seething mob-like mass of pure rage and opinion.

But according to the CIA, you may help prevent the next terror attack. As a top Langley official told the Washington Times:

“A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

Yes, that’s right: the CIA now has intelligence-gatherers who do nothing more than sit around and read blogs all day. (Down side: creeping police state. Up side: ‘You mean, I could get paid for this?!’)

Curiously, while most stories of this type include assurances that the CIA would never, ever use domestic sources, this one doesn’t. So who knows, maybe Bush is getting summaries of Atrios‘ latest included in his daily brief. OTOH (let’s hope the bright boys at CIA can crack that code), maybe the prez just wants to get the latest scoop on Tom Cruise’s placenta eating.

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