THIS Will Get Some Folks Spinning!

It seems the CIA is data-mining blogs.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin. 
"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

Now this should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. What we bloggers publish is free and available to anyone. Coupled with the fact that businesses are finding that they ignore bloggers at their peril, is it a surprise that the CIA would see some value in this? It's not just the CIA, either. Traffic logs show fairly regular hits originating from the house.gov domain. Also the State Department, the IRS and a whole bunch of other government agencies. And let's face it, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard ain't exactly Instapundit.

UPDATE: Greetings to visitors from A Blog For All. Please do take a look around. Unless you're spying on me. I hope nobody thinks I'm really paranoid. Did I say that out loud?

I don't show any hits from the CIA, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching.

Feeling paranoid, lately?