By Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 29th, 2013
For over 50 years, U.S. intelligence agencies have given the American citizen an access to unclassified, open-source information from around the world. It’s long provided individuals “the power to identify what really is happening in a specific country or region,” acknowledge federal officials.
But in 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will end public access to that unclassified data.
So even as the U.S. government spies on the leaders of friendly countries, it’s working to deny you much of the information you need to know what’s going on in the world.
Here’s how things currently work. The CIA manages the federal intelligence community’s Open Source Center (OSC) – but on December 31st, 2013, the Agency will end its data feed to the World News Connection (WNC).
The WNC is operated by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).
An NTIS brochure points out that the WNC “is an online news service, only accessible via the World Wide Web, that offers an extensive array of translated and English-language news and information.”
“Particularly effective in its coverage of local media sources, WNC provides you with the power to identify what really is happening in a specific country or region,” continued the brochure.
“Compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources, the information in WNC covers significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, and environmental issues and events,” states NTIS.
“The information is obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper articles, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports,” points out the brochure.
“New information is entered into WNC every government business day. Generally, new information is available within 48-72 hours from the time of original publication or broadcast,” stated the NTIS.
But it won’t provide that data to you for much longer.
