Communities of Practice – Page 947 – Public Intelligence Blog

The YouTube Jihadists: A Social Network Analysis of Al-Muhajiroun’s Propaganda Campaign

by Jytte Klausen, Eliane Tschaen Barbieri, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and Aaron Y. Zelin

Abstract

Producers of Al-Qaeda inspired propaganda have shifted their operations in recent years from closed membership online forums to mainstream social networking platforms. Using social network analysis, we show that behind the apparent proliferation of such sources, YouTube account holders associated with incarnations of the British al-Muhajiroun collude to post propaganda and violent content. European groups commonly use American platforms and domain names registered with American companies. Seeking shelter under speech rights granted by the First Amendment, they evade European laws against incitement and hate speech.

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2012/10/112012/10/11

Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Government

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Intelligence agencies turn to crowdsourcing

Sharon Weinberger

BBC 10 October 2012

EXTRACTS:

Research firm Applied Research Associates, has just launched a website that invites the public—meaning anyone, anywhere—to sign up and try their hand at intelligence forecasting. The website is part of an effort, sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), to understand the potential benefits of so-called crowdsourcing for predicting future events. Crowdsourcing aims to use the “wisdom of crowds” and was popularised by projects like Wikipedia.

. . . . . . . .

There’s good reason for Iarpa’s interest in finding new ways to collect useful information: the intelligence community has often been blasted for its failure to forecast critical world events, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Arab Spring that swept across North Africa and the Middle East. It was also heavily criticized for its National Intelligence Estimate in 2002, which supported claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Those failures raised larger questions about how the intelligence agencies come up with forecasts, which is usually a deliberative process involving a large number of analysts. The Iarpa project, known officially as Aggregative Contingent Estimation, is looking at whether crowdsourcing can result in more accurate forecasts about future events than those traditional forms of intelligence estimation.

Continue reading “Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)”

2012/10/112012/10/11

Chuck Spinney: TIME Blog on Key Questions That Don’t Get Asked in Presidential Debates

Government, Ineptitude, Military

Key Questions That Don’t Get Asked in Presidential Debates

By Chuck Spinney | October 11, 2012

For reasons that were quite clear well before the Afghan “surge” began (see here and here), America’s Afghan adventure is now ending without achieving its goals, despite Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s claim Wednesday in Brussels that “significant progress” has been made in the war.

To the contrary, the Taliban have survived the U.S. troop surge with its fangs and shadow governments intact; they have no incentive to negotiate, and they are poised to launch a spring offensive in 2013.

The prospects for a civil life in Afghanistan are likely to become even more remote than they were before we intervened.

Indeed, some experts think the ground work has been laid for a disastrous civil war, perhaps even worse than that which occurred after the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989 with their tail between their legs. Only time will tell how bad things will be, but a recent report by Gilles Dorronsoro for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains quite persuasively why it is now virtually certain that events in Afghanistan will be ugly and murderous.

One would expect a healthy democratic government, one based on the principle of accountability, would be intent on learning from its errors and inclined to seek an understanding of how it got itself into such a mess.

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2012/10/112012/10/11

Berto Jongman: New World Order (Banks) Facing Challenge from New New World Order (BRICS+)

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Being read in Europe.

Swiss Study Shows 147 Technocratic “Super Entities” Rule the World

Susanne Posel
Infowars.com
October 10, 2012

bank control — Click on Image to Enlarge

The Swiss Federal Institute (SFI) in Zurich released a study entitled “The Network of Global Corporate Control” that proves a small consortiums of corporations – mainly banks – run the world. A mere 147 corporations which form a “super entity” have control 40% of the world’s wealth; which is the real economy. These mega-corporations are at the center of the global economy. The banks found to be most influential include:

• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• JPMorgan Chase & Co
• Vanguard Group
• UBS
• Deutsche Bank
• Bank of New York Melon Corp
• Morgan Stanley
• Bank of America Corp
• Société Générale

However as the connections to the controlling groups are networked throughout the world, they become the catalyst for global financial collapse.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: New World Order (Banks) Facing Challenge from New New World Order (BRICS+)”

2012/10/102012/10/10

Mini-Me: Libyan Guards Tell Their Story

Government, Ineptitude

Huh?

Libya guards speak out on attack that killed U.S. ambassador

Two Libyan militiamen guarding the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi deny aiding the attackers. They say they initially fought back but fled when outnumbered.

By Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles TimesOctober 10, 2012, 7:02 p.m.EXTRACTS:

BENGHAZI, Libya — Face down on a roof inside the besieged American diplomatic compound, gunfire and flames crackling around them, the two young Libyan guards watched as several bearded men crept toward the ambassador's residence with semiautomatic weapons and grenades strapped to their chests.

. . . . . . . . .

But nothing, they say, had prepared them for this. They had practiced for an attack by 10 or 15 people; now there were scores of professional-looking militants who moved methodically and used well-practiced hand signals. To make matters worse on the night of Sept. 11, instead of four militiamen who were supposed to be on guard, there were only two inside the compound.

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2012/10/102012/10/12

Richard Wright: Jim Clapper Speaks to Excessive Dependence on Technical Intelligence, and the Evident Non-Existence of Human Intelligence in the Middle East

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Escaping Excessive Dependence on Technical Intelligence

Speaking at the GEOINT 2012 Symposium (09 October), Director of National Intelligence (DNI) General James Clapper (USAF ret.) argued that the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. citizens in Benghazi, Libya caught the U.S. by surprise because the attacks did not “emit or discuss their behavior” beforehand. Colin Clark, editor in chief at AOL Defense has interpreted this to mean the attackers “apparently maintained web, cell, and radio silence” prior to the attack, giving the U.S. no prior warning.

If Clark’s interpretation is correct, the only conclusion that can be reached is that saving for technical intelligence (Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)) there is no serious U.S. effort to maintain contact with and develop an understanding of the various groups involved in the so-called Arab Spring anywhere. CIA apparently has not seen fit to even establish its now usual liaison relationship with the official Libyan National Security Establishment, let alone build up contacts with the various militias (and tribal leaders) who appear to dominate so much of Libya. It is of course possible that CIA was tracking the perpetrators of this attack as an al Qaeda affiliate but was unaware of its intentions to attack embassy compound but this seems improbable.

Continue reading “Richard Wright: Jim Clapper Speaks to Excessive Dependence on Technical Intelligence, and the Evident Non-Existence of Human Intelligence in the Middle East”

2012/10/102012/10/10