CIA, FBI start A-Space a 'Facebook for spies'

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At the same time that businesses complain about workers using social networking sites during office hours, the CIA and FBI will have no problems accessing their new social networking site A-Space, set to be launched this month.

Agents from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies will be able to access the new site and chat with fellow members and share sensitive information, but the site and its content will not be available to the public. Federal agents can add friends like they do on Facebook but nobody outside the intelligence community can view this information.

Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis told CNN:

"It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more...It's a place where not only spies can meet but share data they've never been able to share before...This is going to give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A-Space umbrella."

Wertheimer demonstrated the new site to CNN and showed how analysts will use it to collaborate.

For example, if Osama bin-Laden releases a video, the site will help analysts from various agencies and agents from various locations to identify the source of the video and discuss the appropriate next steps.

The site will help officials share sensitive information quickly, and to every agent. This initiative even could have helped officials avoid Sept. 11; an FBI agent sent an email to his colleagues before the incident took place, warning everyone about people learning to fly airplanes but not learning to land them. Because that email didn’t reach everyone, most were unable to take any further action to stop it.

Wertheimer added:

"There was the question, 'Was that a dot that failed to connect?' Well, that person did this via e-mail...A-Space is the kind of place where you can log that observation and know that your fellow analysts can see that."

Unlike Facebook and MySpace, which are catered toward youth, A-Space is for people of any age group and experience.

There will be plenty of security built into A-Space, and not everyone will be able to access the site before obtaining suitable security clearance from upper management.