Communities of Practice – Page 1344 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/02/23

Journal: Free Twitter Rocks, People Rule in Haiti

Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Twitter Teams with Haiti Telco To Provide Free Text Tweets

WIRED 22 February 2010

Text messages have already raised $32 million for Haiti relief. Now Twitter is partnering with the devastated nation’s dominant telco to provide free text Tweets to Haitians so they can better keep in touch with each other and the outside world.

“Kevin Thau and our mobile team have recently arranged free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes on the company’s blog. “To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404. Accounts are created on the fly and any account can be followed this way.”

The move is much more than a gesture, as it might seem in place where limitless text plans abound and the standard of living is much higher. Under Digicel’s pre-paid plan Haitians pay $0.08 to text locally, $0.15 to text internationally and $0.23 to send an MMS. But considering that the country’s per capita income is about $1,300, that would be the equivalent of $2.46, $4.62 and a whopping $7.07 in the U.S. (which had a 2008 per capita income of about $40,000).

As has become almost routine now, the initial flood of information and pictures to emerge from the disaster zone reached the world via Twitter, and the use of texting is an especially crucial lifeline in the underdeveloped world.

Phi Beta Iota: BRAVO TWITTER! Who would have thought Haiti would be the silver lining for the poor. At one stroke Twitter hass connected scharitable giving from the 80% that do not normally give, with the bottom-up needs of the poor articulated via Twitter for free. Now if Twitter can team with others such as Nokia, Microsoft, and IMB to offer free cell phones to the five billion poor, with back office harvesting of the data and a global grid of volunteer translator educators in 183 languages, we save the world quick time.

2010/02/222010/02/25

Journal: Commentary on Moonlighting at the CIA

Government, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership-Integrity

In a 1 February 2010 article adapted from the his forthcoming book, ‘Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage,' Eamon Javers wrote:

“In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.”

“The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.”

“But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.”

Commentary Below the Fold

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2010/02/222010/02/22

Journal: 21 Years Late, An Inkling of Discovery

08 Wild Cards, Methods & Process, Military

Military Launches Afghanistan Intelligence-Gathering Mission

Full Story Online

By Joshua Partlow

KABUL — On their first day of class in Afghanistan, the new U.S. intelligence analysts were given a homework assignment.

First read a six-page classified military intelligence report about the situation in Spin Boldak, a key border town and smuggling route in southern Afghanistan. Then read a 7,500-word article in Harper's magazine, also about Spin Boldak and the exploits of its powerful Afghan border police commander.

The conclusion they were expected to draw: The important information would be found in the magazine story. The scores of spies and analysts producing reams of secret documents were not cutting it.

“They need help,” Capt. Matt Pottinger, a military intelligence officer, told the class. “And that's what you're going to be doing.”

The class that began Friday in plywood hut B-8 on a military base in Kabul marked a first step in what U.S. commanders envision as a major transformation in how intelligence is gathered and used in the war against the Taliban.

Last month, Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, published a scathing critique of the quality of information at his disposal. Instead of understanding the nuances of local politics, economics, religion and culture that drive the insurgency, he said, the multibillion-dollar industry devoted nearly all its effort to digging up dirt on insurgent groups.

“Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” he wrote in a paper co-authored by Pottinger and another official and published by the Center for a New American Security.

Phi Beta Iota: DoD mind-set time lags are quite consistent with those of other bureaucracies. They are just 21 years late. See the two original publications below:

1988 Commandant of the Marine Corps “Global Intelligence Challenges of the 1990's“

1992 USMC GM-14 “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, and Intelligence–An Alternative Paradigm“

and so on…..sadly, DoD is still in lip service mode and is about to implode DIOSPO. In Ripley's “Believe It Or Not” column, the joint briefing created by Joe Markowitz and Robert Steele, with help from loyal frustrated DoD personnel who do want to get it right, has not been read and is not being acted on. If anyone is interested, see both briefings here:

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2010/02/21

Journal: IED Deja Vu–from Viet-Nam with Love…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military

Robots and bees to beat the Taliban

The homemade IED is the extremists’ deadliest weapon and America is spending billions on trying to combat it. We are granted access to this secret, smart and bizarre world

Phi Beta Iota: In 1988 the US Marine Corps told the emerging MASINT community that their highest priority was the detection of explosives at a stand off distance regardless of the container. This was based on USMC experience in El Salvador, where wooden containers were used to defeat mine detectors. The article is incorrect about mines replacing small arms as the weapon or casualty-causer of choice; mines in Viet-Nam took out more people (and the able-bodied needed to carry the wounded) than any other capability. The Israeli solution is a well-trained dog.

2010/02/20

Journal: The End of Old Money

03 Economy, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Mobile

We stopped subscribing to WIRED when advertising crossed the 60% mark, but this issue came to us and has a useful article on the end of old money, which is to say, the end of money where banks and credit cards take an undeserved cut from every transaction while taking huge risks with your money as collateral.

The Open Money movement is proceeding apace, with community-oriented credit cards like Interra, new forms of home rule stripping corporations of their illegitimate “personality” status, and moving money from Wall Street to the local bank.

Meanwhile, Twitter is changing the world again by becoming a trusted point to point money transfer agent. here are five new ways to pay that cut out the banks and credit card organized legalized crime lords:

Twitpay. Type a friend's Twitter handle, a dollar amount, and twitpay to transfer funds to their PayPal account.

Zong. Instead of entering credit card information anew for every online purchase, users fill in their phone number and the charge shows up on their monthly bill.

Square. The latest from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, this 3/4 inch cube turns any iPhone into a credit card reader.

GetGiving. This mobile app uses PayPal to enable charities to accept small donations without the usual exorbitant credit card transactions fees.

Hub Culture. Travelers can avoid the hassle and fees of swapping dollars for euros by transacting in vritual currency in this international network of workstations.

To our surprise, PayPal itself, central to most alternative schemes, was not highlighted other than being mentioned above.

2010/02/202010/02/20

Journal: Modern Obstacles to Spying & Assassination

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

(1) I've seen some of the surveillance video on CNN; here is a link to more.

(2) Regardless of who ran the operation, sounds like the Hamas guy needed to go;

(3) in addition to surveillance and biometrics, proliferation of commercially-available databases such ChoicePoint creates additional operational challenges.)

Full Story Online

How spy technologies foil old-school political killings

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn

Saturday, February 20, 2010; A13

The practice of secretly assassinating purported enemies of the state — an age-old tool of foreign policy — has run up against steadily improving international police collaboration and the global proliferation of surveillance technologies that make it harder for anyone anywhere to surreptitiously conduct a high-profile killing on foreign soil.

In Doha, London and now Dubai, political killers have been caught on film and tracked, provoking unexpected attention and controversy for the organizers. Because of new biometric technologies, the proliferation of cheap video, and sophisticated monitoring of customs points and airports, the skills of those who specialize in the creation of fictional identities have been tested, and sometimes defeated.

The apparent political killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has ricocheted around the world in recent days after his alleged attackers were spotted by a camera above an elevator at the Dubai Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, in the United Arab Emirates. Four suspects, all obvious weight-lifters, were filmed exiting in pairs and heading for Mabhouh's room.

Shortly after the killing, they were again filmed, this time more nervously boarding the same elevator, wearing the same baseball caps. Then they were filmed again, leaving the airport on flights to Europe, Africa and Asia. On Thursday, Interpol issued warrants for 11 suspects after the Dubai police conducted a careful study of their videotaped movements at nearly a dozen locales. Their mug shots had already been flashed on television screens around the world.ed to this report.

2010/02/202010/02/20

Search: how much is al-qaeda worth?

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Mobile

Very cool question. We don't have the answers, but here are a few thoughts.

Who benefits? There is only one beneficiary of Al Qaeda as a virtual actor: the US Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Congressional Complex whose outrageously wasteful funding and excessive (70%) obligations to contractors are bankrupting the US economy, but who cares as long as the corporate gravy train keeps rolling along. The indigenous peoples seeking self-determination, including the long-repressed people of Saudi Arabia and the long-repressed peoples of Palestine, do not benefit from a model that Mahatma Gandhi clearly understood was self-destructive. Non-violence is the only sustainable path to self-determination.

Calculating value. With the above firmly in mind, Al Qaeda's “value” to the sole beneficiary, the MIICC, is a combination of three sums:

1. The sums Al Qaeda and related groups receive from governments, corporations, and individuals interested in sustaining radical Islamic violence against both Muslims and the West.

2. The sums the US and others spend on false flag operations attributed to Al Qaeda (the underpants bomber is probably an Israeli false-flag operation with US consent and colalboration)

3. The sums the MIICC receives from a corrupt Congress that has not done a serious national security baseline evaluation of need since Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) retired from his post as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

What is Al Gaeda Worth? Our wild-ass but informed guess is $1 trillion a year. That one trillion a year is both positive value (for those that benefit) and negative value (for all the others). With one trillion a year we could have brought the USA into the 21st Century, funded free cell phones for the five billion poor so they could create infinite stabilizing and self-sustaining wealth, and created a prosperous world at peace.

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