The most fascinating aspect of the story about the contractor fired for something she wrote on her blog on Intelink is that Intelink has blogs.
That wasn’t the case in March 2005 when Kris Alexander—an intelligence officer in the US Army Reserve and proprietor of the wonderful Alexander the Average—wrote this article for Wired online:
The first step toward reform: Encourage blogging on Intelink. When I Google “Afghanistan blog” on the public Internet, I find 1.1 million entries and tons of useful information. But on Intelink there are no blogs. Imagine if the experts in every intelligence field were turned loose – all that’s needed is some cheap software. It’s not far-fetched to picture a top-secret CIA blog about al Qaeda, with postings from Navy Intelligence and the FBI, among others. Leave the bureaucratic infighting to the agency heads. Give good analysts good tools, and they’ll deliver outstanding results.
Unless, of course, you start firing people for actually using the tool.