Drones & UAVs – Page 2 – Public Intelligence Blog

In the last week, much has been made of the leaked DoD briefing entitled ISR Support to Small Footprint (CT) Operations – Somalia and Yemen, dated February 2013. To date, all the reports I have read, save one, focus on the “critical shortfalls” of drone warfare revealed in these slides — see, for example The Intercept, which broke the story on October 15 and placed the slides on the net, and this report in Common Dreams, and anti-war progressive outlet. Both of these reports and the briefing slides contain a lot of useful information are well worth careful reading. But there is more.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Drones of War — Send Money”

2015/10/152015/10/14

Patrick Meier: Summary of Recent Accomplishments

Advanced Cyber/IO, Drones & UAVs, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies

QED – Goodbye Doha, Hello Adventure!

EXTRACT

I joined the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) well over 3 years ago with a very specific mission and mandate: to develop and deploy next generation humanitarian technologies. So I built the Institute’s Social Innovation Program from the ground up and recruited the majority of the full-time experts (scientists, engineers, research assistants, interns & project manager) who have become integral to the Program’s success.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Summary of Recent Accomplishments”

2015/10/142015/10/12

Patrick Meier: Automating Visual Heuristics — Human Clicks Train Computer Algorithms on Big Data (Aerial)

Drones & UAVs

Using Computer Vision to Analyze Big (Aerial) Data from UAVs During Disasters

Recent scientific research has shown that aerial imagery captured during a single 20-minute UAV flight can take more than half-a-day to analyze. We flew several dozen flights during the World Bank’s humanitarian UAV mission in response to Cyclone Pam earlier this year. The imagery we captured would’ve taken a single expert analyst a minimum 20 full-time workdays to make sense of. In other words, aerial imagery is already a Big Data problem. So my team and I are using human computing (crowdsourcing), machine computing (artificial intelligence) and computer vision to make sense of this new Big Data source.

2015/05/03

Patrick Meier: Nepal Humanitarian UAV Lessons Learned — A Long Way to Go — Internet Pipe is Achilles Heel.

Drones & UAVs, IO Impotency

Humanitarian UAV Missions in Nepal: Early Observations

Phi Beta Iota: Worth a full read. We are reminded of DARPA's STRONG ANGEL and note with interest that the Internet being down in Nepal makes a lot of the UAV collection irrelevant — sort of like NSA's global collection that is not processed and 99% of “big data” not being processed (per Mary Meeker). The lack of bandwidth, lack of processing, and lack of open source sense-making tools continue “The Big Disconnect.”

2015/04/122015/04/10

Mini-Me: Military Veterans Ask Drone Pilots to Stop

07 Other Atrocities, Drones & UAVs, Ethics, Military

Huh?

Military Veterans Target US Drone Strikes in TV Ads

A group of military veterans is taking aim at U.S. drone strikes overseas with graphic TV ads directly asking Air Force pilots to stop flying the unmanned aircraft, calling the operations immoral and illegal.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Military Veterans Ask Drone Pilots to Stop”

2014/12/182014/12/18

Advance Order (15 Jan 15): Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response

Advanced Cyber/IO, Crowd-Sourcing, Drones & UAVs, Geospatial, Governance, Innovation, Liberation Technology, Resilience, United Nations & NGOs, Worth A Look

This book shows us once again why Patrick Meier is a thought leader in leveraging emerging technologies for social impact. His book captures the enormous possibilities and avoidable pitfalls of big data, social media and artificial intelligence in crisis contexts. Digital humanitarians can be powerful agents for social change but ground-truthing what we see and hear digitally is more important than ever.
—Aleem Walji, Chief Innovation Advisor, Leadership, Learning, and Innovation, World Bank Group

Phi Beta Iota: The book title and description from the publisher are misleading. This is not a book about Big Data. It is a book about distributed human networks using open source information technologies to achieve situational awareness with a speed and precision that the entire US secret intelligence community (which costs $100 billion a year) cannot match.

See Also:

Patrick Meier @ Phi Beta Iota

2014/11/202014/11/20

Berto Jongman: Jailed 9/11 Hijacker Fingers 2 Saudi Royals — Turki al-Faisal and Bandar Spouse — Cheney’s Role Not Yet Under Investigation

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Drones & UAVs, Government, IO Deeds of War

Jailed 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui accuses two of Saudi's most senior royals – including a former ambassador to US – of ‘paying for Osama bin Laden's terror plot' in extraordinary claim from prison

Phi Beta Iota: Bin Laden is not believed by honest experts to have had anything to do with 9/11, which was a very well-funded state terrorism plot that probably had the full complicity of Dick Cheney. The 9/11 Commission, like the Warren Commission, was an official cover-up.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Jailed 9/11 Hijacker Fingers 2 Saudi Royals — Turki al-Faisal and Bandar Spouse — Cheney's Role Not Yet Under Investigation”