IO Impotency – Page 185 – Public Intelligence Blog

Exclusive: Courier Led U.S. to al Qaeda Internet Conference

The Daily Beast, Aug 20, 2013 1:25 PM EDT

U.S. officials followed the Internet trail of an al Qaeda courier to learn the details of an electronic conference between more than 20 of the organization’s top officials.

Prior to the worldwide security alert that temporarily shuttered U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East earlier this month, authorities captured an al Qaeda courier who had in his possession a recording of a seven-hour Internet-hosted meeting between more than 20 senior al Qaeda leaders from around the globe, U.S. intelligence officials said.

. . . . . .

Earlier this summer, the al Qaeda courier began uploading messages to a series of encrypted accounts containing minutes of what appeared to have been an important meeting. A U.S. intelligence agency was able to exploit a flaw in the courier’s operational security, intercepting the digital packets and locating the courier, according to two U.S. intelligence officials and one U.S. official who reviewed the intelligence. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Seven Hour Al Qaeda Conference Call — NSA Missed It”

2013/08/22

Eagle: Bradley Manning Lessons Learned

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Media

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Bradley Manning trial: six things we learned

As the army private awaits news of his sentencing, here's a look at the intriguing nuggets which emerged from his court martial

Paul Lewis in Fort Meade
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 August 2013

Lessons (List Only):

1. Bradley Manning made history

2. Journalism is no longer monopolised by traditional media

3. The US government may never have found Wikileaks' source

4. Wikileaks embarrassed the US government, but nobody died

5. The US military is no place for gay men questioning their gender

6. The war on US leakers is here to stay

Read full article.

2013/08/202013/08/20

Stephen E. Arnold: Google — A Losing Battle for Relevance

IO Impotency, IO Technologies

Google: A Losing Battle for Relevance

I wrote a feature for Beyond Search which summarized the relevance problems for the query “ocr programs.” You can find that article at http://goo.gl/aBDjyI. The main point is that an average user would find links to crapware, flawed software, or irrelevant information. But Google was not the only offender. Bing and Yandex returned results almost as frustrating to me as Google’s output.

You may know that indexing the Web is expensive, technically challenging, and filled with pitfalls. Over the years, Web indexing systems which depend on advertising to pay the bills have walked a knife edge. On one side, are spoofers who want to exploit free visibility in a search results list. On the other side are purists like me who expect a search and retrieval system to return results which are objective and conform to standard tests such as those for precision and recall.

The Web indexes try to balance the two sides while calculating furiously how to keep traffic up, revenues growing, and massaging the two sides to remain faithful to Google. For those looking for free visibility, Google wants to offer an advertising option in the event that a site drops or disappears from a results list. For the inner librarians, Google has to insist that results are indeed relevant to the users.

I am okay with distorted results. I am okay with the search engine optimization folks who charge large sums to spoof Google. I am okay with librarians who grouse about the lack of date filtering and advanced search operations. I am pretty much okay with the state of search.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Google — A Losing Battle for Relevance”

2013/08/202013/08/20

Berto Jongman: US Military SATCOM Vulnerabilities

IO Impotency, Military

The Future of MILSATCOM

This report argues that the US's military satellite communication systems (MILSATCOM) are becoming increasingly vulnerable to physical, electronic and cyber-attacks by those who reject the idea that space should be a conflict-free domain. Given these threats and the specter of reduced budgets, the report thus suggests that the US might want to improve the passive defense, disaggregation and dispersement capabilities of its MILSATCOM systems.

Download :English (PDF · 57 pages · 1.0 MB)

Author: Todd Harrison Series: CSBA Studies

Publisher: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), Washington DC, United States

See Also:

All Army CYBER RECAPS

2013/08/192013/08/19

Stephen E. Arnold: Content Processing SUCKS

IO Impotency

Next Generation Content Processing: Tail Fins and Big Data

Posted: 18 Aug 2013 03:11 PM PDT

Note: I wrote this for Homeland Security Today. It will appear when the site works out its production problems. As background, check out “The Defense Department Thinks Troves of Personal Data Pose a National Security Threat.” If the Big Data systems worked as marketers said, the next generation systems would these success stories provide ample evidence of the value of these Big Data systems?]

Next-generation content processing seems, like wine, to improve with age. Over the last four years, smart software has been enhanced by design. What is your impression of the eye-popping interfaces from high-profile vendors like Algilex, Cybertap, Digital Reasoning, IBM i2, Palantir, Recorded Future, and similar firms? ((A useful list is available from Carahsoft at http://goo.gl/v853TK.)

For me, I am reminded of the design trends for tail fins and chrome for US automobiles in the 1950s and 1960s. Technology advances in these two decades moved forward, but soaring fins and chrome bright work advanced more quickly. The basics of the automobile remained unchanged. Even today’s most advanced models perform the same functions as the Kings of Chrome of an earlier era. Eye candy has been enhanced with creature comforts. But the basics of today’s automobile would be recognized and easily used by a driver from Chubby Checker’s era. The refrain “Let’s twist again like we did last summer” applies to most of the advanced software used by law enforcement and the intelligence community.

clip_image001 The tailfin of a 1959 Cadillac. Although bold, the tailfins of the 1959 Plymouth Fury and the limited production Superbird and Dodge Daytona dwarfed GM’s excesses. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cadillac1001.jpg

Try this simple test. Here are screenshots from five next-generation content processing systems. Can you match the graphics with the vendor?

Here are the companies whose visual outputs appear below. Easy enough, just like one of those primary school exercises, simply match the interface with the company

The vendors represented are:

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Content Processing SUCKS”

2013/08/182013/08/18

Penguin: Human Terrain System — A Critical View

Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency

When Eggheads Go to War

EXTRACT:

The Human Terrain System had been sold to the Army as a means of providing cultural knowledge to battlefield commanders. But as I watched the trainees interview residents near the Kansas-Missouri border, it became clear that whatever information they would be providing did not stem from any special knowledge of Iraqi or Afghan culture. Instead of offering cultural expertise, the Human Terrain System was training recruits to parachute into places they’d never been, gather information as quickly as possible, and translate it into something that might be useful to a military commander. One of the few Human Terrain social scientists I met with relevant experience, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology who had done his dissertation fieldwork in Afghanistan, would describe his Human Terrain work as “windshield ethnography.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Penguin: Human Terrain System — A Critical View”

2013/08/16

Eagle: NSA Has Violated Privacy Rules Thousands of Times, Audit Finds

Corruption, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times, audit finds

Transgressions ranged from serious legal violations to typos that led to unintended data collection, according to documents supplied to The Washington Post.

The National Security Agency exceeded its legal authority and broke agency rules thousands of times since it was granted broader powers in 2008, according to an internal agency audit obtained by The Washington Post.

Most violations involved unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the U.S., according to the documents, which were supplied to the newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents show infractions ranging from serious legal violations to typographical errors that resulted in unintended data collection, The Post reported.

The agency was not always forthcoming with the details of its transgressions, the Post found. A quality assurance report not shared with an oversight committee found that a “large number” of calls were placed to Egypt 2008 when the U.S. area code 202 was mistakenly entered as 20. In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA warrant requests, was not made aware of a new collection method until it had been in place for several months. The court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional, the Post reported.

The audit, dated May 2012, uncovered 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications, the Post reported. One of those cases involved the unauthorized use of data on 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Read full article.