歷年考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解2003年01

[00:06.12]2003 Text1 [00:12.28]Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. [00:15.51]The American spymaster who built the Office of [00:18.42]Strategic Services in World War II [00:21.35]and later laid the roots for the CIA [00:24.38]was fascinated with information. [00:27.67]Donovan believed in using [00:29.25]whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" [00:32.58]of espionage--spying as a "profession." [00:36.81]These days the Net, [00:38.93]which has already re-made such everyday pastimes [00:42.26]as buying books and sending mail, [00:44.68]is reshaping Donovan's vocation as well. [00:48.78]The last revolution isn't simply a matter of [00:51.70]gentlemen reading other gentlemen's e-mail. [00:54.62]That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. [00:59.16]In the past three or four years, [01:01.38]the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry [01:04.91]of point-and-click spying. [01:08.12]The spooks call it "open-source intelligence," [01:11.66]and as the Net grows, it is becoming [01:13.88]increasingly influential. [01:16.70]In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see [01:21.74]who could compile the most data about Burundi. [01:26.20]The winner, by a large margin, [01:28.41]was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, [01:32.25]whose clear advantage was its mastery [01:35.07]of the electronic world. [01:38.20]Among the firms making the biggest splash [01:41.13]in this new world is Straitford, Inc., [01:43.65]a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. [01:48.29]Straitford makes money by selling the results [01:51.31]of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) [01:55.85]to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. [02:01.70]Many of its predictions are available online [02:09.78]Straitford president George Friedman says [02:12.91]he sees the online world as a kind of [02:15.18]mutually reinforcing tool for [02:17.81]both information collection and distribution, [02:21.23]a spymaster's dream. [02:23.54]Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits [02:27.49]from the far corners of the world [02:29.60]and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. [02:32.52]"As soon as that report runs, [02:35.24]we'll suddenly get 500 new Internet sign-ups from Ukraine," [02:39.58]says Friedman, a former political science professor. [02:43.40]"And we'll hear back from some of them." [02:45.83]Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, [02:49.86]since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. [02:54.00]That's where Straitford earns its keep. [02:57.82]Friedman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin. [03:02.16]Several of his staff members [03:03.83]have military-intelligence backgrounds. [03:06.76]He sees the firm's outsider status [03:09.17]as the key to its success. [03:11.69]Straitford's briefs don't sound like [03:14.22]the usual Washington back-and-forthing, [03:17.34]whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations [03:20.26]on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, [03:23.49]says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.

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