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. The phrase" the biggest splash"( line 1, paragraph 3)most probably means