I've overdone this metaphor, but I really do see the panoply of sources we have about Iran as an intelligence service to the masses.

We've got reliable Humint -- on the ground sources. We've got open-source reports from broadcast and newspaper media. We've got analysis, in the form of great aggregation by smart observers. We lack, um, signals intelligence, but Twitter is really a form of SIGINT, isn't it? There's plenty of misinformation out there, like rumors that Ahmadinejad is going to stage an assassination attempt, so we need to be careful about how we judge the information. If we're a savvy analyst, we need to be careful about the weight we attach to photographs and video accounts. They're the most immediate and emotionally powerful, but they can distort our understanding of the situation, particularly of about the importance of specific developments.

To start with, here's the raw data stream from Twitter, with the hashtag of the Iranian election. Remember, this data is unfiltered. There are some nuggets surrounded by garbage. Follow the debates: "(I hear that NPR is claiming that it is false news that Mousavi is in crowd now. IT'S NOT! Tell them pp, we have pics!)" -- that's a real tweet. How would you evaluate it if you were on the Iran desk?