The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Slide: HUMINT Circles 2.0
Citation: Robert David STEELE Vivas, “Graphic: Nine HUMINT/OSINT Circles,”
Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, 17 December 2012
This corrects the earlier oversight of not integrating education & training (our first defense and our most reliable eyes and ears are our own people), along with research & development, must be fully integrated with, not isolated from, the fifteen slices of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) / Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).
The crisis of legitimacy and representation
Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo
ForumBlog.org, Dec 17th, 2012
The ongoing spat between the cyber community and the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reveals a much larger crisis that the world is increasingly facing – the crisis of the legitimacy of representation.
The UN and the Internet are arguably two of humanity’s greatest accomplishments of the 20th century: both bring the world closer by facilitating dialogue and though each has its flaws most would agree that the world is a better place because of their creation.
With so much in common then, why do the two communities find themselves embroiled in conflict?
The underlying issue, I would argue, is that in the same way the United Nations changed the world’s expectations around how problems are solved, so too is the Internet in bringing about a sea change in how citizens expect to be represented in both government and markets.
The UN was designed based on the principle of representative government. As citizens, our voices are represented via a proxy delegate appointed by the proxy government charged with representing our will.
This system, when implemented well, has succeeded in reducing violent conflict, increasing qualities of life and reducing civil strife by empowering citizens with the means to provide an input into their governance.
The digital revolution and direct popular representation
The conflict we’re beginning to see comes from the fact that the tools of the Internet are enabling individuals to represent themselves in conversations previously managed by proxy representatives.
Sencha demonstrates HTML 5 can be faster than native iOS or Android apps (Facebook example)
You've heard that Facebook switched from HTML 5 to “native” apps on iOS and Android recently to “speed them up.” That pissed off the developers from Sencha
So they built a Facebook app completely in HTML 5 that's even faster than the native Android and iOS apps that Facebook released last week.
Sencha builds HTML 5 programming tools and here we discuss the market for app developers and the choices they have to make. Later today I'll be at Facebook and will ask them more about why they can't match the speed Sencha displays here.
This blew away many of my assumptions of native vs. HTML 5 and proved that I was wrong when I said that the reason Facebook's app was faster was because it was native.
Did it change your assumptions? Here's Sencha's own blog and video of what went into building this demo.
Below is the video I shot at my house on Friday (YouTube 34:48).
Thomas Leo Briggs is a retired CIA operations officer with 3 years military experience in US Army military police, 3 years as a Special Agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration and 26 years in the CIA. He tried to make use of computer capabilities to aid and assist HUMINT operations in a variety of ways throughout his last 18 years as an operations officer. He is also the author of Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos (Rosebank Press, 2009).
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Further reflection on HUMINT and OSINT. I see them as complementary to both operations (HUMINT collection) and analysis. I also see that they should be looked at differently for operations and analysis.
In operations, which I know more about than analysis, there is the general need for HUMINT operators (so as to not bias this toward any one member of the intel community, I use HUMINT operators rather than case officers) to know as much as as possible about the country, region, culture, etcetera where they will be working. Operators collect raw intelligence and it is turned into field intelligence reporting. Someone in the field must review and vet that raw intelligence – we used to call them reports officers. The review must be able to determine if the alleged raw intelligence is really that and not openly known information somewhere in the country or region. Obviously, there must be one or more officers in a field office with knowledge of as much about the open source information as possible, or has the tools at hand to check open source information, and also with knowledge of the secret intelligence that has already been reported, so as to avoid duplicative raw intelligence reporting.
Continue reading “Thomas Briggs: Reflections on OSINT in Support of HUMINT”
The 29th Chaos Communication Congress (29C3) is an annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.
For 29 years, the congress has been organized by the community and appreciates all kinds of participation. You are encouraged to contribute by volunteering, setting up and hosting hands-on events with the other components of your assembly or presenting your own projects to fellow hackers.
Some basic survival guidelines might come in handy for everything not answered in our 29C3 FAQ. Updated information are covered by the CCC Events Blog or via Twitter (@CCC).
As this website is part of a wiki you can contribute information, too. Login or register an account and go ahead. Refer to the 29C3-wiki-usermanual and the help page for information about using a MediaWiki.
These are my words, reflecting what I learned in multiple funded trips to work with Dutch intelligence at various levels, and multiple conversation across various conferences I attended in Europe. This is more or less what I told George Tenet when he became DCI….to no effect, naturally.
1994 was a very stressful time in Dutch intelligence history. A scandal had erupted in which the Parliament was investigating Dutch intelligence intrusions with audio-video into the homes of specific Dutch citizens suspected of this and that. Parliament was so angry they threatened to cut all funding for all intelligence. Two very good things emerged from this:
Human, force is.
Plugging into the Future of Humanity: Exploring the Human API
I recently had the opportunity to present at LeWeb in Paris, arguably Europe’s largest conference dedicated to the future of technology. The theme of the conference explored the Internet of Things, where devices and things connect to one another to perform certain tasks and/or track activities to improve what we already do or make possible what we’re trying to do.
The Internet of Things is bigger than we may realize. We are experiencing a shift from a world of inanimate objects and reactive devices to a world where data, intelligence, and computing are distributed, ubiquitous, and networked. My fellow analysts and I at Altimeter Group refer to the Internet of Things (IoT) as the Sentient World. It’s the idea that inanimate objects gain the ability to perceive things, perform tasks, adapt, or help you adapt over time. And, it’s the future of the Internet and consumer electronics.
In 2008, the number of things connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on earth. By 2020, it’s expected that there will be 50 billion things connected.
A network of things creates an incredible information ecosystem that connects the online and physical world through a series of transactions. In a world where data becomes a natural bi-product of these exchanges, developers, businesses, and users alike are faced with the reality that data isn’t only big, its volume and benefits are also overwhelming.
Did you know that the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day? According to IBM, 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.
