15,000 Affected By Intelligence Community Server Shutdown
Atlantic POLITICS
Oct 8 2009, 9:53 am
EXTRACT: A CIA analyst who works on open source projects with state and local law enforcement officials said that uGov provided the only secure way to provide them with critical homeland security information.
Several Defense Intelligence Agency employees wrote that the e-mail offered them cover for their intelligence gathering work — using uGov at an internet cafe in a foreign city wouldn't be a problem because, being an innocuous-sounding domain, did not reveal which agency they worked or what they did.
“I can't imagine doing my job as effectively without it,” an ODNI employee wrote.
Phi Beta Iota: The Davies J-Curve, first publicized in Davies, James C. 1962. “Towards a Theory of Revolution”, American Sociological Review, Vol. XXVII. p. 5-18, is illustrated above. A staple in the study of revolution, it's basic premise is that masses do not revolt when they are oppressed and it is their usual condition, but rather after they have seen a better alternative, and then been repressed back from that alternative. OSS.Net was 20 years ahead of the curve–now the general secret population has caught up with us, they have been given avery modest and narrowly-applied tool that never-the-less vastly exceeded the mediocrity of standard secret information and communications technologies, and there is no turning back. If the DNI does not reverse this decision, and then move decisively toward both full access to all open sources and toward the automated ntegration of all that is collected, his legitimacy in the eyes of his own employees will be severely diminished. See our two briefings, DoD OSINT Leadership Briefing and DoD OSINT Staff Briefing, on how to use DIOSPO as the fulcrum to serve the DNI in this higher purpose.
Note: Marc Ambinder has provided a new posting, Trying To Pacify The uGov Community that contains a very important and overlooked core concept from the DNI: the intent is to switch to webmail. Webmail is vastly more helpful in the sense that it moves all the C-Drive email storage into the commons where the aggregate can be searched and repurposed. This makes sense. What we are seeing is a communications failure as well as a planning failure. The DNI clearly means well and has the right idea, but is out of touch with both the younger generation and the art of the possible. For an update on the art of the possible, surfing the Google Wave while avoiding all of Google's embedded predatory warts, seeEVENT: 23 Sep 09 0900-1100 National Press Club Washington, D.C. CHANGE 2010: Responding to Real Time Information, Open Systems and the Obama IT Vision [Google-Microsoft Meld] and also Journal: Google Wave–Good, Bad, & Ugly Adhere Solutions is the sole USG point of contact for Google Federal, with a rather unique ability to not only serve up Google at its best, but to also protect the IC and the USG from Google at its worst. Somat Engineering is the 8A firm with strong roots in and access to low-cost Indian ICT services that can deliver Adhere plus real-time open source information access now.
