Full Story Online

Hewlett-Packard is building collaboration software with video, application-sharing and 3-D graphics support into several of its workstation models, giving the high-definition conferencing market an option well below the cost and scale of telepresence.

SkyRoom is available worldwide as a free, preinstalled feature of HP Z800, Z600, Z400 and xw4600 workstations. Some premium business PCs and laptops coming from HP in the next few months will offer the software on a 90-day trial basis.

The software is also available for purchase for an estimated U.S. street price of US$149 and can be used on workstations and PCs from Dell, Lenovo and Sun, HP said. In addition to the Core 2 Duo or equivalent processor, those systems will need at least 2GB of RAM, a webcam and XP or Vista. HP is also offering the HP SkyRoom Accessory Kit, which includes a high-resolution webcam and headphones or speakers, for $119.

2009/09/222009/09/22

Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots

10 Security, Military, Strategy

2001: What to do about Afghanistan? Prospects for Stability

2008: Memo Leak Says Mission In Afghanistan Doomed

Meet the Afghan Army: Is it a figment of Washington's imagination? by Ann Jones

Afghan agony: More troops won't help by Ralph Peters in the NY Post

Time to Get Out of Afghanistan By George F. Will Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Continue reading “Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots”

2009/09/222009/09/24

Journal: Government Corruption and Inattention; Foreign Influence and Access: Religious Counterintelligence

Ethics

Phi Beta Iota: We started thinking about religious counterintelligence in 2003, after reading Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, at which point we concluded that we not only needed an FBI division for commercial counter-espionage, but a religious division as well, one able to track not just Islamic support to terrorism, but Jewish, Catholic, Mormon and other penetrations of the U.S. Government working against the public interest. This all has to be understood in the context of a government that has sold out deliberately at the political level to 42 or 44 dictators and particularly to Israel and Saudi Arabia–regardless of which party is in power, they are not being held accountable for their broad betrayals of the public trust, hence, if the FBI won't do it, this needs to be a public intelligence initiative, with a special focus on dual citizens of Israel and USA (see below the fold).

We were looking at Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. They had a list of individuals in the Pentagon broken down by access to certain types of information. Some of them would be policy related, some of them would be weapons-technology related, some of them would be nuclear-related. Perle and Feith would provide the names of those Americans, officials in the Pentagon, to Grossman, together with highly sensitive personal information: this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic. The files on the American targets would contain things like the size of their mortgages or whether they were going through divorces. One Air Force major I remember was going through a really nasty divorce and a child custody fight. They detailed all different kinds of vulnerabilities.

The epicenter of a lot of the foreign espionage activity was Chicago.

Continue reading “Journal: Government Corruption and Inattention; Foreign Influence and Access: Religious Counterintelligence”

2009/09/212009/09/21

Journal: Information Arms Race

10 Security, Government, Reform, Strategy

Full Story Online

Information as the New Arms Race

An official report last week reveals weaknesses in our effort to prevent another 9/11.

Gordon Grovitz

L. GORDON CROVITZ

Monday, September 21, 2009

The U.S. is the only country whose laws mandate the release of details of its intelligence goals and operations. Every four years, the National Intelligence Strategy document discloses the priorities of the usually hidden operations of the country's 16 intelligence agencies.

A key theme of last week's report is that we're now in what might be called an information arms race, driven by technology.

. . . . . . .

One previously top-secret disclosure last week was the amount the U.S. spends across its civilian and military intelligence operations. Mr. Blair said this is $75 billion a year, including 200,000 intelligence professionals. These details alert other countries to what it would take to close the intelligence gap.

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2009/09/21

Worth a Look: One World Research

Commercial Intelligence, Methods & Process, Non-Governmental, Worth A Look

With a tip of the hat to Intelligence Online, we recommend One World Research as being worth a look. IO highlighted them as being part of the open source intelligence support to litigation against CIA for renditioin and torture.

One World Research is a research, investigation, and consulting firm that provides high-quality services to clients involved in promoting public interest causes. Our clients include law firms, universities, governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, journalists, and filmmakers.

Utilizing a network of experienced investigators, attorneys, public policy analysts, and human rights experts, One World Research provides a broad scope of services in the United States and throughout the world, including litigation and advocacy assistance, investigative services, research, and consulting.

2009/09/21