Monday, September 27, 2004
Secret Services show down
Hello, good morning and how do you do – this is Cybersurf a weekly look at what’s happening in our neck of the Internet woods. I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang.
Today we follow up on an idea from John – who suggested that we look at the the new NIA or National Intelligence Agency site – and then compare it with the sites put up by some of the better known security service agencies.
So here goes the secret service show down – with the NIA in our corner, Mi5 in the red, blue and white trunks of the UK and the world famous heavy weight from the United States – the CIA.
A quick overview reveals immediately that the three sites are at very different levels of maturity and of resources. The American site is a massive Portal-style web site with sections on everything related to security issues from a “kids anti-drug page” to photos of last week’s swearing in of the new Director of the CIA.
I would guess that there is at least one person who is fully employed updating the CIA site as it appears to be updated every working day of the week. The British site – Mi5 is also fairly extensive, but I would deduce that it is updated once a week. By comparison, the South African NIA site appears to have nothing more recent than the second week of August – an entry about womens’ day - they are really not giving away any secrets there.
Both the American and South African security services place great importance on the “Vision and Mission” in both cases displayed prominentnly near the top of the page – while the British site doesn’t seem to have either.
The CIA and Mi5 both have extensive history sections – in the case of the English agency – going back almost a hundred years. Since the NIA is a mere ten years old, it would hardly seem worthwhile putting up a history section just yet.
The language factor is also quite interesting – both the US and the UK only consider one language other than English – can you guess what language that is? I’ll give you a clue – the language is related to the biggest single sections on each of their respective sites.
Yes, both devote huge amounts of web space to the threat of terrorism – and both have sections in Arabic.
I found this quite surprising because many American sites these days would have Spanish as an alternative language.
Mi5 does have however, a substantial section concerned with Northern Ireland and domestic terrorism. It also has many mega bytes devoted to Security advice on how to deal with specific forms of attack such as hand carried bombs, letter bombs, vehicle bombs and of course – other bombs.
My favourite part on Mi5 is the Myths section which debunks some of the urban legends that ocassionally spring up. The list of Myths includes:
Mi 5 does not recruit tall people,
Mi 5 carries out assassinations, spies on Muslims, vets all ministers and many more crazy ideas – that I might have believed in.
My favourite section on the CIA site has to be the CIA World Fact book – I have been using it for years. It is truly one of the most useful reference works on the Internet. It is regularly maintained and carries an enromous amount of political and econmic information on every country in the world.
The most useful section on the South African NIA site is the annual report – it is extensive and informative but it takes a long time to turn from one page to another.
An overall comment on the South Afrifcan site – it is a good start, but like many of our govenrment sites – it needs more content and needs to be updated at least once a week.
And so we conclude today’s edition of Cybersurf. If you missed any of the addresses – never fear – I will put the whole script – together with Internet addresses on the Cybersurf blog which you can find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time cybersurf.blogspot.com
Thanks for listening and till next week – remember to keeeep on surfing.
Addresses of sites mentioned in today's program:
