Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Intemet. The American spy who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War Ⅱ and later laid the roots for the (CIA) was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great " of espionage--spying as a "profession." These days the Net, which has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan’’ s vocation as well. The latest revolution isn’’ t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’’ s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call it "open- source intelce," and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Bumndi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its y of the electronic world. Among the firms the biggest splash in this new world is Straifford, Inc., a private intelce-ysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straifford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www. straitford, com. Straifford President George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spy’’ s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far comers of the world and predicting a cr in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we’’ II suddenly get 500 new Intemet singe-ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we’’ 11 hear back from some of them." Open- source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That’’ s where Straifford earns its keep. Fridman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin.Several of his staff members have military- intelce backgrounds. He sees the firm’’s outsider status as the key to its success. Straifford’’ s briefs don’’t sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice. It can be learned from paragraph 4 that