Joke of the day: Web 2.0 in the US government.

For those who like me are skeptic about what is called "Web 2.0" perhaps the US government can convince us otherwise. This couple of news articles shows its commitment to bet our Tax dollars on this phenomenon.

Now we should feel secure, since the US intelligence discovered that the tool that was created to make information available easily to everyone is also very good to keep it from them!!! You think I am joking? not a all

The U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday unveiled its own secretive version of Wikipedia, saying the popular online encyclopedia format known for its openness is key to the future of American espionage.

When I first read this article, I thought that US government will try to hack into terrorist WIKI systems and spy on them :-) but I was wrong.

The office of U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte announced Intellipedia, which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink Web much like its more famous namesake on the world wide web.

A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users since its introduction April 17. Less restrictive versions exist for "secret" and "sensitive but unclassified" material.

Of course Mr Negroponte is very aware of all the risks that they are taking with this initiative!

"We're taking a risk," acknowledged Michael Wertheimer, the intelligence community's chief technical officer. "There's a risk it's going to show up in the media, that it'll be leaked."

It is not a surprise that Mr Bush's worst nightmare is this information getting to US reporters. Anyone else is OK!

Intelligence officials are so enthusiastic about Intellipedia that they plan to provide access to Britain, Canada and Australia.

Even China could be granted access to help produce an unclassified intelligence estimate on the worldwide threat posed by infectious diseases.

"We'd hope to get down to the doctor in Shanghai who may have a useful contribution on avian flu," senior intelligence analyst Fred Hassani said.

I am probably twisting the truth, so read the article and let me know what you think.

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The second article praises Web2.0 as the saver of democracy in our nation.

Though it may not be obvious, the road marks in this amorphous thing called Web 2.0 are political: grassroots participation, forging new connections, and empowering from the ground up. The ideal democratic process is participatory and the Web 2.0 phenomenon is about democratizing digital technology.

There's never been a better time to tap that technological ethic to re-democratize our democracy.

And from now on every Joe Schmo can play detective and trace every single donation he makes!

For example, tagging information about federal expenditures, unpaved highways or toxic waste sites with GeoRSS would let citizens easily cross-reference the data with other information, including campaign donations. Data feeds that use Ajax, JSON and OpenGIS Web Map Service can incorporate externally hosted geospatial capabilities into mashups that weave data together into a single, multifeatured map.

Full article here.

Now if you were not convinced Web 2.0 is the next internet revolution, you should probably be by now :-)))