Category: Commercial Intelligence

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Marcus Aurelius: Global Phone-Tracking Blown Big Time….

10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Geospatial, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Mobile, Real Time
Marcus Aurelius

I recall that Viet-Nam era secret writing was blown by an Admiral in his memoirs, causing all future terrorists and secret police to photocopy incoming and outgoing mail.  This appears to be publicity we could have done without.

Meet the ‘Keyzer Soze’ of Global Phone-Tracking

Spencer Ackerman

WIRED, July 18, 2011

‘The capability of doing mass tracking is possible.’

EXTRACT

Around the world, TruePosition markets something it calls “location intelligence,” or LOCINT, to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. As a homeland security tool, it’s enticing. Imagine an “invisible barrier around sensitive sites like critical infrastructure,” such as oil refineries or power plants, TruePosition’s director of marketing, Brian Varano, tells Danger Room. The barrier contains a list of known phones belonging to people who work there, allowing them to pass freely through the covered radius. “If any phone enters that is not on the authorized list, [authorities] are immediately notified.”

Read full article…

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Venessa Miemis: GAO Slams Fed for Lack of Integrity

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commercial Intelligence, General Accountability Office
Venessa Miemis

From Senator Bernie Sanders, US Senator for Vermont

The Fed Audit

July 21, 2011

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

Read the rest of this damning summary, and use link to full report….

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Marcus Aurelius: Whiz Kids Gettings Out, CIA Armed Camps and Prisons Outside War Powers Act….

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, IO Impotency
Marcus Aurelius

Whizz kids deserting the spy world as threat of attacks increases

GCHQ is losing “whizz kid” specialists to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon because they can triple their pay, the head of the agency has warned.

Duncan Gardham

 The Telegraph, 20 July 2011

Read full story….

The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia

The Nation, 1-8 August 2011

EXTRACT

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu.

Read full story….

Phi Beta Iota:  Contributing Editor DefDog also recommended these two stories.

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Koko: Microsoft Fifth Largest Linux Company

03 Economy, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Impotency
Koko the Reflexive

Top Five Linux Contributor: Microsoft

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | July 17, 2011

Linux and Open Source

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols & Paula Rooney
EXTRACT

In a Linux Weekly News story, currently only available to subscribers, an analysis of Linux 3.0 contributors reveals that Microsoft was the fifth largest corporate contributer to Linux 3.0. While only 15h overall, that still puts Microsoft behind only Red Hat, Intel, Novell, and IBM in contributing new code to this version of Linux.

To be exact, Microsoft developer K. Y Srinivasan gets the credit for helping to improve Linux. Of course, as you might guess, neither Srinivasan nor Microsoft are doing this due to any particular love tor Linux per se.

The vast bulk of Microsoft’s contributions has been to its own Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor drivers. Hyper-V is Microsoft’s 64-bit hypervisor-based virtualization system. It’s Microsoft’s answer to VMware and Linux’s own native Kernel-based Virtualization Manager (KVM).

Read full story….

Phi Beta Iota:  This is interesting–and disappointing.  Microsoft could be doing so much more.   OpenBTS, Open Data Access, Open Spectrum, and Open Source Intelligence (now M4IS2) are rapidly approaching take-off points that will see them join Free/Open Source Software and Open Hardware.  Microsoft could be central to all of this, but it evidently chooses not to.  It recent waste of Sir Richard Branson in delivering platitudes to their huge event is a real let-down.

See Also:

Graphic: Open Everything

Graphic: One Vision for the Future of Microsoft

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Seth Godin: Creating Crossroad Moments Today

Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process
Seth Godin Home

The invisible crossroads

In Career World, crossroads don't happen very often. Should I go to college? Which one? Should I quit this job? Where should I apply…

In Project World, on the other hand, every day offers a choice that could change things. Should you start a new project? Organize a conference? Open a new channel of social media? Quit something you're doing right now to make time for something else?

It's easy to get stressed and excited about the infrequent crossroads. It's just as easy to ignore the daily opportunities you have to change everything.

Phi Beta Iota:   The status quo has failed.   As Dr. Russell Ackoff would say, we cannot keep doing the wrong things righter.  It's time to do the right thing.  Integrity is the core value, M4IS2 is the method.

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John Robb: 94% of Rich Fear Riots Calling for their Blood

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats
John Robb

WSJ:  94% of global millionaires fear riots/unrest in the streets that calls for their blood.  As well they should.

Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets

Robert Frank

Wall Street Journal, 6 July 2011

EXTRACT:

A new survey from Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of those with liquid assets of $1 million or more found that 94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.

Fully 90% of respondents have a negative view of the current global economic climate and 41% say they have little or no faith that the U.S. will be able to right itself in this fiscal climate.

Read full story…

Phi Beta Iota:  The super rich have created a global plague of failed states, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation, thinking governments that they corrupted will take care of it.  Not so.  Corruption is a super-plague.  Integrity is the antidote, M4IS2 is the method by which the super-rich can fund a win-win recovery.  They did it once before, addressing public health in New York City.  Time for big ideas again.

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Winslow Wheeler: Analysis of House Mood on Defense Cuts

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, DoD, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Winslow Wheeler

Below is an important and interesting analysis of John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World of the “mood” of the House on defense issues.  I do not agree with all of the characterizations or implications (and I agree with some), but I do believe John (whom I have known professionally with respect for almost four decades) has collected some significant information.  From this and other data, I conclude:

1) No one should be surprised at the House' ambivalence on a defense issue like Libya.  It has been the hallmark of Congress for longer than I can recall to permit presidents to do as they please internationally while sniping from the sidelines and avoiding taking responsibility;

2) Congress pats itself on its own back for pretending to support frugality in the Pentagon by taking easy votes such as against the second engine for the F-35 (which SecDef Gates successfully painted as a pork program) and against a piece of the DOD funding for military bands (see below).  The size of the votes on matters that are actually significant, such as the Barney Frank/Ron Paul and the Mulvaney amendments to cut from $8.5 to $17 billion from the 2012 DOD budget, shows a new high-water mark for budget cutting in the Pentagon not seen in Congress since — by my recollection — in the mid-1980s when the so-called Military Reform Caucus and budget cutters like Chuck Grassley were fully active.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Analysis of House Mood on Defense Cuts”