Stephen E. Arnold: Mats Bjore and SILOBREAKER

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commercial Intelligence
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Exclusive Silobreaker Interview: Mats Bjore, Silobreaker

With Google becoming more difficult to use, many professionals need a way to locate, filter, and obtain high value information that works. Silobreaker is an online service and system that delivers actionable information.

The co-founder of Silobreaker said in an exclusive interview for Search Wizards Speaks says:

I learned that in most of the organizations, information was locked in separate silos. The information in those silos was usually kept under close control by the silo manager. My insight was that if software could make available to employees the information in different silos, the organization would reap an enormous gain in productivity. So the idea was to “break” down the the information and knowledge silos that exists within companies, organizations and mindsets.

And knock down barriers the system has. Silobreaker’s popularity is surging. The most enthusiastic supporters of the system come from the intelligence community, law enforcement, analysts, and business intelligence professionals. A user’s query retrieves up-to-the-minute information from Web sources, commercial services, and open source content. The results are available as a series of summaries, full text documents, relationship maps among entities, and other report formats. The user does not have to figure out which item is an advertisement. The Silobreaker system delivers muscle, not fatty tissue.

Mr. Bjore, a former intelligence officer, adds:

Silobreaker is an Internet and a technology company that offers products and services which aggregate, analyze, contextualize and bring meaning to the ever-increasing amount of digital information.

Underscoring the difference between Silobreaker and other online systems, Mr. Bjore points out:

What sets us apart is not only the Silobreaker technology and our commitment to constant innovation. Silobreaker embodies the long term and active experience of having a team of users and developers who can understand the end user environment and challenges. Also, I want to emphasize that our technology is one integrated technology that combines access, content, and actionable outputs.

The ArnoldIT team uses Silobreaker in our intelligence-related work. We include a profile of the system in our lectures about next-generation information gathering and processing systems.

You can get more information about Silobreaker at www.silobreaker.com. A 2008 interview with Mr. Bjore is located at on the Search Wizards Speak site at http://goo.gl/f7niAH.

Stephen E Arnold, November 25, 2013

Phi Beta Iota: We also use SILOBREAKER and recommend it to the US Government, among others.  We do not use Palantir (nor will we ever) and we are in the process of disengaging from all aspects of Google. Integrity matters. SILOBREAKER has integrity where others fall short.

See Also:

Mats Bjore at Phi Beta Iota

Search: OSINT software

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Searches, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

The search term brings up appropriate results, but the fact of the search gives us an opportunity to provide comment.

1)  Nothing now being used by governments, and certainly not iBase or Palantir, both aging technologies that do not scale and have too many fat-finger handicaps, fulfills the originial requirements documents crafted in the late 1980's.

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

2)  The ONLY programs that have gotten anywhere close are COPERNICUS plus plus, and SILOBREAKER.  However, both of these have been slow to recognize the urgency of integrating–fully integrating–capabilities that address each of the eighteen functionalities.  Below is the list of softwares now in use by US Special Operations Command J-23 Open Source Intelligence Branch along with the STRONG ANGEL TOOZL and a couple of other things.

Memorandum: USSOCOM Software List and STRONG ANGEL TOOZL

See also:

Definitions: M4IS2 (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing & Sense-Making

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Worth a Look: Deep Web Multilingual Federated Search

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Worth a Look: Planetary Skin Data Sharing Initiative

Search: meta-tagging humint

Who’s Who in Librarian Intelligence: Arno Reuser

Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: Mats Bjore

Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Stephen E. Arnold

Journal: Dr. Dr. Dave Warner Shares…

Event Report CORRECTED LINKS: Responding to Real Time Information, Open Systems and the Obama IT Vision [Google-Microsoft Meld]

Review: The Starfish and the Spider–The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Review: Innovation Happens Elsewhere–Open Source as Business Strategy

Journal: Google, the Cloud, Microsoft, & World Brain

Worth a Look: GeoChat (SMS Plotted on Map)

2006 Yekelo (ZA) Continental Early Warning & Information Sharing: A Military Perspective on Deterring & Resolving Complex Emergencies

1998 Arnold (US) New Trends in Automated Intelligence Gathering Software

The global standard for multinational information-sharing and sense-making is in the process of being designed, funded, and distributed.  If you think you have something relevant to that, generally only open source software will be considered, get in touch with any of the individuals above.

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Searches, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
COIN20 Trip Report
Paradise Found

The future of OSINT is M4IS2.

The future of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is Multinational, Multifunctional, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing & Sense-Making (M4IS2).

The following, subject to the approval of Executive and Congressional leadership, are suggested hueristics (rules of thumb):

Rule 1: All Open Source Information (OSIF) goes directly to the high side (multinational top secret) the instant it is received at any level by any civilian or military element responsive to global OSINT grid.  This includes all of the contextual agency and mission specific information from the civilian elements previously stove-piped or disgarded, not only within the US, but ultimately within all 90+ participating nations.

Rule 2: In return for Rule 1, the US IC agrees that the Department of State (and within DoD, Civil Affairs) is the proponent outside the wire, and the sharing of all OSIF originating outside the US IC is at the discretion of State/Civil Affairs without secret world caveat or constraint.  OSIF collected by US IC elements is NOT included in this warrant.

Continue reading “Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]”

Journal: Librarians and The Accessibility Paradox

Academia, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Methods & Process
Full Source Online
Full Source Online

Fortunately, most librarians have gotten used to the fact that the Internet is a tremendous boon to researchers and that free information is a fantastic idea. Sure, we haven't yet reallocated our organizational resources to recognize this fact—our staff time is much more likely to be devoted to acquiring and messing about with purchased information than in making good information from our archives, our labs, or the web more easily available.  [Emphasis added.]

Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her next mystery, Through the Cracks, will be published by Minotaur Books in 2010.
Barbara Fister

We need to separate our value—the way we curate information, champion its availability in the face of intolerance of unpopular ideas and economic disparity, and create conditions for learning how to find and use good information—from the amount of money it takes to acquire stuff on the not-so-open market. We need to be quite clear that good information is good information, no matter how it's funded. And we need to find creative ways to partner with those who add value to information and find sustainable models for the editorial work that can make good academic work better.

Continue reading “Journal: Librarians and The Accessibility Paradox”

Who’s Who in Commercial Intelligence: Mats Bjore

Alpha A-D, Commercial Intelligence
Mats Bjore
Mats Bjore

Mats Bjore is unique in many ways.  He is one of just two Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) pioneers recognized with Royal Awards for his accomplishment in creating the Swedish Military Long-Range Reconnaissance OSINT network.  He has gone on to be a successful manager for knowledgement (McKinsey), and advisor to Factiva, and CEO and founder of two companies, INFOSHERE AB and SILOBREAKER AB, as well as a third company-software, Able-to-Act.

From 1992 onwards, he has been one of a dozen people nurturing OSINT, a hybrid discipline now established in over 90 countries around the world.

We credit him with coining the term “commercial intelligence” to provide for 360 degree intelligence that embraces “true cost” accounting as well as intangible valuations that “competitive intelligence” does not appreciate.

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