In an age when information sharing is the name of the game, intelligence agencies have also embraced the latest off-the-shelf technology to get their work out to others. “We are using wikis, we are using blogs, we are using chat, we are using instant messaging,” says Eric Haseltine, the chief scientist for the Director of National Intelligence. Given the sheer volume of information flooding into the community each day, he adds, “We have to be very creative in coming up with better stuff.”

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have created a computer system that uses software from a popular Internet encyclopedia site to gather content on sensitive topics from analysts across the spy community, part of an effort to fix problems that plagued prewar estimates on Iraq.