Communities of Practice – Page 1012 – Public Intelligence Blog

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Sounds like good idea as long as everybody knows the rules of game.

Garbage Collectors Around the U.S. Trained to Report Suspicious Activity

Public Intelligence

Several newspapers in southern Florida are reporting that trash collectors are receiving training from their employer Waste Management to work with local law enforcement to report crimes and other suspicious activities. The training is part of a program called Waste Watch that is designed to leverage the fact that “drivers are familiar with their routes and are in the same neighborhoods every day” which “puts them in the unique position to spot unusual activity and anything out of the ordinary.” Press releases from Waste Management describe the program as a way of opening “channels of communication with the authorities to help keep them informed and alert of what’s happening in their city’s streets and alleys.”

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Your Garbage Man is Watching You – Do Not Yawn”

2012/04/012012/04/01

DefDog: Cell Phone is Your Leash – Police Own You

Corruption, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement

Who needs NSA when the phone companies are doing it for revenue streams?

Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

Eric Lichtbau

New York Times, 31 March 2012

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.

With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.

Read rest of article.

2012/04/01

DefDog: Verizon 2012 Report on Hactivism & Data Breaches

Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military

A useful report that ignores the obvious: the internal errors and omissions as well as the “legal” penetrations and outside-of-legal warrant exploitation.

Talking to some IC insiders who simply do not get it, am forced to conclude that there is regressive de-evolution, and the US IC is the poster child for going backwards.

2012-03-31 Verizon Data Breach Report

Phi Beta Iota: The National Security Agency (NSA) was directed by the President many many years ago to be responsible for commercial security. NSA chose to leave commercial security exposed for its own convenience–NSA, in other words, has been criminally irresponsible with respect to the public interest, for decades.

2012/04/012012/04/01

Chuck Spinney: Cancer of Careerism – Final Word on Colin Powell’s Moral Suicide

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Military

There is not much new here, other than Curveball's public admission, but note Colonel Wilkerson’s comment below. One the one hand, Wilkerson admits he was a party to the “sexed up” intelligence; on the other, he wants us to believe Powell (and by extension himself) was being used. Given that “Curveball” was suspected of being a liar by the German intelligence (BND) as well as the CIA, the most charitable interpretation of Powell’s enthusiastic imitation of Adlai Stevenson's speech to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis is that once the decision to attack Iraq was made, neither Powell nor Wilkerson had the courage to resign on principle, and both chose instead to be a party to the fabrication — or as we used to say in the Pentagon he chose to be “used” by going along to get along.

Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion

JONATHAN OWEN, Independent, 1 APRIL 2012

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Cancer of Careerism – Final Word on Colin Powell's Moral Suicide”

2012/03/312012/03/31

Mini-Me: Leon Panetta on Dysfunctional Government + Meta-RECAP

Corruption, Government, Military

Huh?

Panetta: Political dysfunction threatens security

By Walter Pincus

The Washington Post, 30 March 2012

(J. Scott Applewhite — Associated Press) “Dysfunction in Washington … threatens our security and raises questions about the capacity of our democracy to respond to crisis.”

That warning came from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta Thursday night at a dinner sponsored by Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, which had just given him its Eisenhower Award for excellence in leadership.

He called the dysfunction “a political crutch” and “not a part of the American spirit.”

Behind Panetta’s remarks is the frustration he feels looking at the current political deadlock in Congress over deficit reduction. He has been there before — as chairman of the House Budget Committee, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and chief of staff at the White House.

“One thing that I’ve learned over my career is that governing requires people coming together to get things done, not to pound their fists on the table and stand in the way,” he told an audience that included present and former government officials, members of Congress, defense industry representatives and dozens of college students.

Read the puke in the middle.

Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, last December gave the same type of lecture, in which he talked about Washington’s short supply of “civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party, listening to and learning from one another, not pretending to have all the answers and not demonizing those with whom we differ.”

Gates, too, talked about politicians’ inability “to sustain bipartisan strategies and policies needed to address our very real and serious problems.”

There must be something good in the Pentagon’s water.

Phi Beta Iota: Pincus is the low-rent version of Ignatius. This article so lacking in intelligence and integrity as to be the epitome of Washington–bottom feeders “honoring” bottom-feeders. Panetta and Gates are both unethical toadies for the military-industrial-congressional complex. They dishonor the Constitution, the Republic, and the flag. All those associated with this charade are in betrayal of the public trust. If they were *only* betraying the US public trust, that would be one thing — when combined with the global war crimes and other atrocities done “in our name,” all of this qualifies Leon Panetta for an appearance before the International Tribunal, along with the CIA drone team, the four service chiefs, and the chains of command for Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen, inter alia.

2012/03/302012/03/30

Steven Aftergood: New Policy on Mitigation Risks of Bio Research

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government

NEW POLICY ON MITIGATING RISKS OF BIO RESEARCH

Certain types of life science research involving “high consequence pathogens and toxins” would be subject to new review and risk mitigation procedures which might include classification of the research or termination of the funding, according to a U.S. government policy issued yesterday by the National Institutes of Health.

The policy applies to research involving 15 specified biological agents and toxins which “pose the greatest risks of deliberate misuse with most significant potential for mass casualties or devastating effects to the economy, critical infrastructure or public confidence.”

Research that increases the lethality or transmissibility of the agent or toxin, or otherwise enhances its harmful consequences, will be subject to the new review procedures.

Based on the outcome of the review, a risk mitigation plan may be developed. If less restrictive measures were deemed inadequate, the new policy would allow for national security classification of the research or termination of government funding.

See “United States Government Policy for Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern,” March 29, 2012.

See also “U.S. Requires New Dual-Use Biological Research Reviews” by David Malakoff, Science Insider, March 29.

Phi Beta Iota: Nice but inadequate. The government is paying lip service to this necessary precautionary principle. If they were really serious, such a policy would encompass all agricultural and industrial processes without exception.

See Also:

Charles Perrow, The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)

2012/03/30