Tacit Approval

The CIA's venture capital group, In-Q-Tel, which invests in promising new technology companies, signed its first-ever licensing extension in June with Tacit, a collaborative technology maker in Palo Alto, Calif. In-Q-Tel signed its initial investment deal with Tacit just a year ago.

In-Q-Tel Chief Executive Officer Gilman Louie, whose blessing carries for small companies the same glitz and prestige as a contract with a major Hollywood talent agency carries for an aspiring actor, said in a statement that Tacit's product held "undeniable value to a wide range of government contractors."

Louie ought to know. In-Q-Tel invests in companies whose technologies fit a CIA-crafted "problem set." What has the agency so batty for Tacit? The company's data-sharing software allows people within a law enforcement or intelligence agency to search their organization's databases for potentially valuable reports, and also to send e-mail messages to their colleagues asking for assistance.

But the product also has a patented secrecy feature that lets employees choose whether they want to respond to those queries, which would reveal their identity and, potentially, their sources of information. The CIA, with a culture of secrecy so strong that colleagues sometimes refrain from discussing their work with one another, clearly sees something in that particular feature that fits its problem set quite nicely.