Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton
...What we have to do is figure out how to use it better then they do - part of that means acknowledging that their use of commercial low cost / no cost tech is in some ways better then our high price / slow to acquire and field tech that because of security requirements often isolates us from the WWW population (another FOB analogy here). The bad guy hopes you invest all of your time in ASAS (All Source Analysis System) and chastise your guys from being on the Internet. He loves that our DOIMs at post restrict every useful site where our Intel folks could troll message boards...
One positive thing about the current company I work for, although their ISD (civilian version of DOIM) is just as - in certain cases even more - restrictive, our section has DSL lines that are separate from the company system. So, I have two computers to work with - one linked into the company, and the other, completely free to roam wherever value may be found. The ISD folks hated the concept, and it took some work - and high-level support - to get it done. But it was damn sure worth it.

By the way, regarding "trolling message boards" etc. - I recommend a cheap ($50) download for monitoring blogs, message boards, and any other website you may keep going back to for checks on new postings/updates: Copernic Tracker. For what its worth, this was another tool recommended to me by my contact at Jane's. It is extremely user friendly, and (for me at least) it saves a helluva lot of time in returning to various sites to check for updates/changes. They offer a 30-day free trial to check it out.