Citizen journalists could outpace government in times of crisis.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security News

The federal government has yet to master social networking websites and may find itself losing out to amateur reporters when disasters strike. Retired Adm. Thad Allen, former commandant of the Coast Guard and leader of the federal BP oil spill response, said the U.S. government must do a better job informing the public in the aftermath of natural or manmade crises.

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If federal authorities aren't forthcoming with information, news media, social networks and bloggers will fill the gaps, and the government will quickly lose credibility, he said at the GovSec conference in Washington, D.C.

He likened the government's choices on how to deal with social media to what someone once told him about climate change. It can either "suffer, adapt or manage."

"I would submit to you that with the Internet, cyberspace and the 24-hour news cycle ... the world we all live in right now is the sociological equivalent of climate change," he said.

The public expects the government to have the same understanding of the Internet as private sector companies such as Amazon do, but it doesn't, he said.

John Brown, director of the Arlington County, Va., office of emergency management in a separate talk about suicide bombings, noted that Israel has a policy of having the local police chief on air giving a statement 10 minutes after any terrorist incident.

"Guess who is actually out there reporting? People on Twitter and Facebook. Information is...