Text 1Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in the World War II and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the “great game” of espionage -- spying as a “profession.” These days the Net, which has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan’s vocation as well.The latest revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call it “open-source intelligence,” and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.Among the firms making the biggest splash in this new world is Straitford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at .Straitford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predict...
