(((Amit Yoran is the former head of cybersecurity for
the Homeland Security apparat. He quit his job
after a year, mostly because so little was going
on there and he found it so boring.)))
(((I guess this is a sign that In-Q-Tel, the CIA's tech
venture outfit, doesn't expect to accomplish much.)))
"CIA's venture capital firm gets new chief
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
By Ted Bridis, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The new chief of the CIA's venture capital organization, In-Q-Tel, wants to make the fanciful spy gadgetry it develops through investments more broadly available to all U.S. intelligence agencies.
Amit Yoran, who resigned as the government's cybersecurity chief in 2004, is taking over as In-Q-Tel's chief executive after the surprise departure of longtime CEO Gilman Louie. Yoran had previously founded a technology startup, Riptech Inc., which Symantec Corp. purchased in 2002 for $145 million in cash.
Yoran, whose career has focused mostly on protecting computers from hackers, said he wants to expand In-Q-Tel to invest in companies whose technology will help not just the CIA, but all U.S. intelligence agencies.
Many of the tools are classified once they're adopted by the spy community, but among the hottest in demand: better tools to mine and analyze large amounts of data, "sensing" technologies and programs to find relationships among information where they aren't obvious, Yoran said. ((("Total Information Awareness," the scheme that won't stay buried.)))
(...)
In-Q-Tel – named for "Q," the fictional inventor of spy tools and toys for James Bond – makes about a dozen such investments annually with roughly $60 million it receives from the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
(((My prediction: Yoran quits after a year, saying that
this sort of activity is better-handled by the private sector.)))
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/04/data_mining_101_find.html
Maybe spying really IS better handled by the private sector
