Category: Collective Intelligence

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Journal: “Pakistan Act” Weakens National Security

05 Civil War, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence
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In opposition to the Pakistan Act, sponsored byBarbara Boxer [D-CA], Thomas Carper [D-DE], Robert Casey [D-PA], Hillary Clinton [D-NY], Christopher Dodd [D-CT], Richard Durbin [D-IL], Charles Hagel [R-NE], John Kerry [D-MA], Richard Lugar [R-IN], Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI], Ron Paul offers some thoughts worthy of consideration.

Phi Beta Iota: The Republic is now confronted with both an Executive and a Legislative Branch that make decisions without regard to strategy, holistic reality-based appreciations, or public discourse on costs and benefits.  The Administration is proposing, and Congress is approving, without serious thought and without regard to the best interests of the American public.  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are turning in their graves.

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Journal: Senate Side-Stepping Constitution

07 Health, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government
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Watching the Constitution Disappear

American Thinker

By Joseph Smith

The President says the Constitution is defective, and now Senator Harry Reid is preparing the coup de grace. Once Reid and Obama emerge from their transparent closed-door consultations on how to blend the two competing Senate Health Care bills, Senator Reid has a nifty parlor trick up his sleeve.   . . . . . .The plan to railroad Obamacare through was initially reported last week by Huma! n Events and The Heritage Foundation, and has now been confirmed by Senator Reid's office.Here is Senator Reid's plan in a nutshell, from CNS News:   A senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CNSNews.com that it is “likely” that Reid will use H.R. 1586-a bill passed by the House in March to impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of certain bailed-out financial institutions-as a “shell” for enacting the final version of the Senate's health care bill, which Reid is responsible for crafting.The rub here, and the reason Senator Reid has conjured up his little parlor trick, is the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 7:   All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.
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Journal: PA & NYPD Criminalize Twitter

10 Security, 11 Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Real Time, Reform

Elliot Madison Accused Of Using Twitter To Tweet Police Actions At G-20 Protests

Tweeting Without a Permit
Tweeting Without a Permit

NEW YORK — A self-described New York City anarchist has been accused of tweeting the location of police officers to protesters trying to evade them during the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvania State Police arrested Elliot Madison alleging he used Twitter to direct the movement of protesters and inform them about law enforcement actions at last month's summit.

Phi Beta Iota: We are–as usual–NOT making this up.  Coming as it does with repeated rumors of on-going preparations to federalize all state and local police forces “as necessary” and the long-standing concerns about the internment camps for use in the event of “civil unrest,” we have to ask ourselves, can this be for real?  According to the Huffington Post, it most assuredly is.

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Journal: Mis-Managing Spectrum

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Mobile, Policies, Technologies

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Warning on surge in wireless traffic

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Chris Nuttall in San Diego

October 7 2009

The head of the US Federal Communications Commission warned on Wednesday that there is not enough room in the airwaves for the “explosion” in wireless data traffic, setting the stage for a big realignment of spectrum usage as the government tries to help mobile carriers keep up with consumer demand.

“The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis,” said Julius Genachowski, the Obama administration appointee who took over as head of the five-member FCC in late June.

Phi Beta Iota: Top-down management of bottom-up needs and capabilities does not work.  Open Spectrum is the only possible solution and has been proven in South Korea among other places.  It's time to stop selling spectrum and start demanding smart devices and intelligent sharing of the commonwealth.

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Journal: Lee Hamilton on Congress

Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform
Lee Hamilton
Lee Hamilton

Overview

Is This The Congress We Want? We Can't Wait Much Longer To Fix Congress Lobbying Murkiness Undermines Our Trust in Congress Congress Confuses the Public and Itself Congressional Bickering Who Lobbies for the Rest of Us? It's Time for the Public to Fund Congressional Travel Congress Needs to Invigorate Its Ethics System, Not Weaken It Why Congress Must Learn To Look Ahead Broken Budget Process Congress and Individual Liberties A Balanced View of Congress The Money Chase Tackling the Tough Issues Is Congress out of Touch? Congress and the Pork Barrel

Phi Beta Iota: Lee Hamilton, a Representative for 30+ years, now leads The Center on Congress at Indiana University.  He is unique for being the single voice most responsible for putting an Open Source Agency (OSA) on pages 23 and 413 of the 9-11 Commission Report, something he did on the basis of what he learned from being on the Aspin-Brown Commission and watching the “The Burundi Exercise” that pitted Robert Steele with six open source telephone calls against the entire U.S. Intelligence Community.  Steele won, producing commercial imagery, Russian 1:50 combat charts, a list of the top academic experts; a list of the top journalists; tribal orders of battle including technical, etcetera.  CIA had a cute little map of the region and a regional economic study with flawed assumptions (mirroring).  Each of the above is a separate short discourse, each worthy of every citizen's attention.

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Journal: Police Chiefs Get Smart About Citizen Intelligence–As Called for by The Smart Nation Act

Collective Intelligence, Law Enforcement
Citizen Intelligence
Citizen Intelligence

Police chiefs endorse anti-terror community watch

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and P. SOLOMON BANDA (AP)

4 October 2009

DENVER — A store clerk's curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty supply products indicated that something about the transaction wasn't quite right — and it's an example of the kind of citizen vigilance that can combat terror, a police commander said Saturday.

Phi Beta Iota: This new initiative is precisely as recommended by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), then a very active member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and author of the Foreword to the book, The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest. Included in his vision is a 411 number for calling in suspicious information, and a similar Internet address that delivers the information to the right precinct. Congressman Simmons has always been a decade or more ahead of the government bureaucracy in recognizing the value of first Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), of which he is the only Member pioneer, and then Public Intelligence in the Public Interest, of which is also the sole Member pioneer.

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Journal: Google $10M for Top Five Ideas

Collective Intelligence
Project 10 to the 100
Project 10 to the 100

Check out Google's Project 10 to the 100, and vote for the ideas among the top ten that you favor.

They are listed below for reader convenience but descriptions and voting blocks are only available at Google's Project 10 to the 100th page.

Help social entrepreneurs drive change    Make government more transparent    Provide quality education to African students    Create real-time natural crisis tracking system    Build real-time, user-reported news service    Drive innovation in public transport    Make educational content     available online for free    Create more efficient landmine removal programs    Work toward socially conscious tax policies    Build better banking tools for everyone    Collect and organize the world's urban data    Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists    Promote health monitoring and data analysis    Enhance science and engineering education    Create real-world issue reporting system    Create genocide monitoring and alert system

The scattered nature of these “surviving ideas” gives us pause.  Several of them should have been grouped into a Collective Intelligence category, many are so far down in the weeds we have to wonder about the substance of the process by which this final list was derived.