IO Impotency – Page 154 – Public Intelligence Blog

CIA UNDERESTIMATES THE POPULATION OF SYRIA

The population of Syria is 17,951,639, according to the CIA World Factbook.

That figure (oddly identified as a “July 2014” estimate) is wrong, according to everyone else.

The discrepancy was noted yesterday in the intelligence newsletter Nightwatch.

“NightWatch consulted six separate sources for the total population of Syria. They agreed that it is between 22 and 23 million people, not 17.9 million as indicated in the CIA World Factbook. There are about 7 million Syrians under voting age of 18 and more than 15 million registered voters,” the newsletter said.

“NightWatch relies on the CIA World Factbook as a standard reference for unclassified factual, baseline information, as does the Intelligence Community. On three occasions since 2006, NightWatch has found errors in the Factbook,” the newsletter added. “This was the third occasion.”

A Congressional Research Service report last month also cites a total Syrian population of “more than 22 million.”

Errors, of course, are to be expected– even, and especially, in intelligence publications. One great virtue of the CIA World Factbook is that it is a public document. This makes it possible for readers to identify such errors, to draw attention to them, and to promote their correction.

2014/06/042014/06/04

Owl: Alternative Media is Winning — on 9/11 and More…

Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Impotency, Media

Alternative Media is Winning

Is the tide finally turning, is the public becoming better informed despite the 24 hour-a-day propaganda onslaught of mainstream media produced by the 1%? It seems so, as this article implies that for the scions of the Establishment and the 1% and their propaganda organs to turn their attention to alternative media and independent research, that is, media and information not under the control of the 1% and their designated dupes, could only mean their mainstream media and information outlets are losing the war against the public's ability to find the truth about the global, regional and local machinations of the Elite, hence the new initiative underway, chronicled in this article, to attack and discredit alternative media under the loaded-term guise of “conspiracy theory.”

Continue reading “Owl: Alternative Media is Winning — on 9/11 and More…”

2014/06/012014/05/31

Hal Berghel: Comments on Intelligence Leadership, Moral Hazards, Manning, Snowden, & Wikileaks

Commerce, Ethics, Government, IO Impotency

Leadership Failures in the National Security Complex

Current NSA forecast: continued Snowden flurries with no end in sight. No one blames the hardworking NSA employees for the latest series of gaffes: it’s the feckless leadership and the politics that got them there that are responsible for our current difficulties

PDF (4 Pages): Hal on Leadership 6-14

Continue reading “Hal Berghel: Comments on Intelligence Leadership, Moral Hazards, Manning, Snowden, & Wikileaks”

2014/05/302014/05/30

Mongoose: Snowden on US IC Security – Non-Existent – NSA Has No Idea What I Took and Zero Control Over Its Files

IO Impotency, IO Secrets

NBC News Exclusive with Brian Williams: Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden

In a wide-ranging and revealing interview, Brian Williams talks with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the global impact and debate sparked by his revelations.

EXTRACT:

“I will say the 1.7 million documents figure that the intelligence community has been bandying—about—the director of N.S.A. himself, Keith Alexander said just a week ago in the Australian Financial Times, or Australian Financial Review I believe—that they have no idea what documents were taken at all. Their auditing was so poor, so negligent, that any private contractor, not even — an employee of the government, could walk into the N.S.A. building, take whatever they wanted, and walk out with it and they would never know. Now, I think that’s a problem. And I think that’s something that needs to be resolved, and people need to be held to account for, has it happened before? Could it happen again?”

Read full article with many video clips.

2014/05/292014/05/28

Yoda: Mary Meeker’s Internet Report 2014 — Explosion in Hand-Helds and Data — Less Than 1% of Data Analyzed

IO Impotency

Tools good, analysis not.

Mary Meeker’s 2014 internet trends report: all the slides plus highlights

PDF (164 Pages): Internet Trends Report 2014 (Mary Meeker)

Five slides below the fold.

Continue reading “Yoda: Mary Meeker's Internet Report 2014 — Explosion in Hand-Helds and Data — Less Than 1% of Data Analyzed”

2014/05/282014/05/28

Yoda: Wikipedia Generally Wrong on Medical Issues – 9 out of 10 Health Entries in Error

IO Impotency

Again, we say.

Using Wikipedia To Look Up Your Illness Is A Bad Idea, Scientists Confirm

Researching symptoms and health concerns on Wikipedia will lead you to false information most of the time, scientists in the U.S. say.

Scientists compared health information from the online encyclopedia with peer-reviewed medical research. They concluded that 90 percent of the site's health entries they studied contained false information on diseases including diabetes, lung cancer, heart disease and depression, the BBC reported.

Researchers said their findings, recently published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, should encourage people to seek professional medical help instead of relying on the Internet.

Read rest of article.

2014/05/282014/05/28

Berto Jongman: Threat Intelligence Is Like Teen-Age Sex

IO Impotency

Why Threat Intelligence Is Like Teenage Sex

Nick Selby

DarkReading, 7 May 2014

Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, and most of the few people who are actually doing it aren't doing it all that well.

Whatever the official theme of the 2014 RSA Conference was, any one attendee will tell you the unofficial theme — the message on every banner in the place, it seemed — was “Threat Intelligence.” But threat intelligence, as it was put to me by Eric Olson of Cyveillance, is a lot like teenage sex: Everyone is talking about it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, and most of the few people who are actually doing it aren't doing it all that well.

There are lots of fashionable things to say about intelligence, and everyone gets all… cool when they discuss it, as if they have some dark, national secret that you don't have. Balderdash!

Let's cut through the mystery in two important ways:

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Threat Intelligence Is Like Teen-Age Sex”

Category: IO Impotency

Steve Aftergood: CIA Gets Population of Syria Way Wrong

Owl: Alternative Media is Winning — on 9/11 and More…

Hal Berghel: Comments on Intelligence Leadership, Moral Hazards, Manning, Snowden, & Wikileaks

Mongoose: Snowden on US IC Security – Non-Existent – NSA Has No Idea What I Took and Zero Control Over Its Files

Yoda: Mary Meeker’s Internet Report 2014 — Explosion in Hand-Helds and Data — Less Than 1% of Data Analyzed

Yoda: Wikipedia Generally Wrong on Medical Issues – 9 out of 10 Health Entries in Error

Berto Jongman: Threat Intelligence Is Like Teen-Age Sex