US puts Iraqi documents on the Web

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/03/18/us_puts_iraqi_documents_o
n_the_web?mode=PF
 
US puts Iraqi documents on the Web
Goal is to speed up translation of files
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff  |  March 18, 2006

Joseph Shahda of Randolph earns his living as an engineer. But in his spare
time, he's an intelligence agent, working to ferret out the truth about the
regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi
government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the
files into English and publish them on a conservative website.

''I feel a sense of duty," said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports
President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. ''I think it's a duty for people
who know Arabic to translate the documents."

US officials hope that thousands of other Arabic speakers feel the same.
Goaded by Congress, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has
begun to release millions of pages of captured files online in an
unprecedented effort to harness the Internet to disseminate raw intelligence
material. There, anybody with a knowledge of Arabic can download the files
and translate them for the world.

It's the same ''open source" principle that drove the successful development
of the Internet and of powerful free software like the Linux operating
system. Instead of hiring a team of brilliant professionals to analyze Iraqi
documents in secret, the open source systems will use hundreds of clever
amateurs, who'll publish their work for anyone to analyze and improve upon.

''Workers control the means of production, but without all that tedious
communism," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of
Tennessee and author of ''An Army of Davids," a book that shows how the
Internet encourages public activism.

US intelligence officials say nearly all the documents released have been
given at least a cursory reading by Arabic experts. Beth Marple,
Negroponte's deputy press secretary, said amateur translators won't find any
major surprises, such as proof Hussein hid stockpiles of chemical weapons.

...


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