Counter Intelligence and the Semantic Web

It is our hypothesis that appropriate use of semantics, and particularly Semantic Web technologies, can have a significant impact on improving the speed of intelligence processing and sharing of intelligence process. For example, analysts within the intelligence community are often tasked as small teams in ad hoc ways to deal with emerging threats (this is sometimes referred to as “surge processing” within parts of the Intelligence Community). For example, immediately following an event a team of analysts may be created to determine who did it, how, and what other intelligence might have been available relating to the event. In other cases, an event may not have occurred, but some potentially interesting intelligence is discovered and a small ad hoc team is formed to explore what may be happening and to issue appropriate warning. In all of these cases, current IT infrastucture is strained because almost by definition the details of the group’s need are not yet in the system of record, the situation was not specifically planned for in IT infrastructuring, and the information sharing needs of the participants were not prearranged. Thus, current practice is for the group to create a small database, a set of notes (often on paper) or other shared information sources that are not accessible to anyone outside the group. Unfortunately, the ad hoc and often unsharable nature of these sources can be a significant detriment as other groups, ad hoc or standing, might be able to use the developing information to “connect the dots” if only it was made available earlier.