THE US intelligence services have released millions of pages of captured Iraqi files on to the internet to help to process raw intelligence material.

The move, prompted by a shortage of US government Arabic speakers, lets anybody download the files to translate them. “Instead of hiring a team of brilliant professionals to analyse Iraqi documents in secret, the open source systems will use hundreds of clever amateurs,” Boston.com said.

The idea was championed by Republican bloggers and politicians keen to bolster retrospectively the case for war. “Workers control the means of production but without all that tedious communism,” Glenn Reynolds, the blogger behind Instapundit.com, said.

Not everybody is convinced. A contributor to Slashdot.com said that several pro-war American sites “were really up in arms about one document . . . that they thought was a secret Iraqi intelligence manual but turned out to be a printout of a web page in English by the Federation of American Scientists from 1997 . . . It’s all pretty silly”.

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm

www.boston.com

www.slashdot.org

www.instapundit.com

Streetwise Chinese

China has given computer gaming “a genteel twist” in a new title commissioned by Beijing. According to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, the game was inspired by Lei Feng, a soldier of the 1960s. He may be apocryphal but his legendary selfless deeds moved China’s rulers, worried about sex and violence on the internet, to make him a national role model. Mousetrap, the Times Online technology weblog, said: “In Learning from Comrade Lei Feng, players earn points by helping elderly people across the street . . . Those with the most points get the chance to meet Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square and get his autograph.”

www.xinhuanet.com/english

www.timesonline.typepad.com/technology

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