The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
US Consortium Forming on Industrial Internet
As many as ten companies including AT&T, Cisco Systems, GE, IBM, and Intel are working with US government representatives to form a consortium to drive the so-called Industrial Internet. Their goal is to define an architectural framework for open industry standards that would serve a broad swath of market sectors from automotive and manufacturing to healthcare and the military.
Continue reading “US Consortium Forming on Industrial Internet”
Dated by 18 months, but still a good overview.
Cash! Bonuses! for Speaking Dhivehi
Who exactly is spying on who, and for what?
The latest Wikileaks peak into STRATFOR Emails is being described as a unique insight into some shadow CIA, while meanwhile some are worried that the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring social media and conducting surveillance of OWS activists. There is a little bit of truth in both stories, but it is such small potatoes.
The big daddy of spying is NSA’s eavesdropping apparatus, and it’s barely able to keep up. It can’t process and translate all of the material it vacuums up from radio and telephone communications, cell phones, email, texts, chats, faxes, and websites belonging to the bad guys. And the rest of the intelligence community is practically deaf in one ear unable to understand the languages of those who are considered the enemy — let alone the languages of our “friends.”
Into the breach marches an army of private contractors, who do a brisk business and are engaged in a death struggle with each other to find people who can speak obscure languages AND at the same time qualify for Top Secret clearances.
Arabic and the languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan (Dari, Pashtu, Urdu) are the priorities, but Farsi speakers, the language mostly of Iran, are in high demand these days. As are African languages, because, well, we have a new African Command that is creating its own empire.
I compiled a list of the languages in demand right now, the companies who are looking for Top Secret cleared applicants, and some of the locations where the spying and analysis is done.
Hebrew anyone? Only one country speaks that language. Dhivehi? That’s the language of the Maldives.
Below is a table of languages desperately sought by private contractors on behalf of the US Intelligence Community:
Intel community worried Obama administration disclosed too much about latest al Qaeda threat
Fear that sources and methods may have been compromised
By Lisa Ruth – The Washington Times Communities, Saturday, August 3, 2013
In warning about possible al Qaeda attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials may have provided too much detail about intercepted chatter and the source of the information, and that may make it more difficult to get such tips next time, former and current intelligence officials say.
. . . . . . .
“Now? We are going to have to start all over again. We are operating blind,” he says.
Search and Null: Not Good News for Some
Posted: 03 Aug 2013 07:20 AM PDT
I read “How Can I Pass the String ‘Null’ through WSDL (SOAP)…” My hunch is that only a handful of folks will dig into this issue. Most senior managers buy the baloney generated by search and content processing. Yesterday I reviewed for one of the outfits publishing my “real” (for fee) columns a slide deck stuff full of “all’s” and “every’s”. The message was that this particular modern system which boasted a hefty price tag could do just about anything one wanted with flows of content.
Happily overlooked was the problem of a person with a wonky name. Case in point: “Null”. The link from Hacker News to the Stackoverflow item gathered a couple of hundred comments. You can find these here. If you are involved in one of the next-generation, super-wonderful content processing systems, you may find a few minutes with the comments interesting and possibly helpful.
My scan of the comments plus the code in the “How Can I” post underscored the disconnect between what people believe a system can do and what a here-and-now system can actually do. Marketers say one thing, buyers believe another, and the installed software does something completely different.
Examples:
Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Search Sucks, Crowd-Sourcing Rocks II”
Huh?
“The message that you sent to an @us.army.mil user with subject “Key references for you into the future” was not accepted for delivery since it contained URLs that Army Cyber Command has disallowed.”
Phi Beta Iota: The message was to a serving flag officer, a long-standing fan of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). When the link was deleted, a second rejection was received because the two memoranda, one for NATO and one for SOCOM, contained Phi Beta Iota links and/or tinyurl links.
Assuming the best, that it is the tiny urls rather than Phi Beta Iota that are confounding Army cyber, we have to wonder why they still have a job if they cannot handle validation of tiny urls on the fly….lazy trumps smart once again.
Here is the link and the two attachments that the US Army Cyber Command, in the infinite wisdom of its weakest officer, has decided not to allow anyone to access using official capabilities.
Search: NATO SOCOM Open Source Agency
DOC (6 Pages): 2013 Open Source Agency
PDF (2 Pages): NATO WATCH Challenges and Solutions 4.0
Big Data and Its Less-Than-Gentle Lessons
Posted: 01 Aug 2013 06:35 AM PDT
I read “9 Big Data Lessons Learned.” The write up is interesting because it explores the buzzword that every azure chip consultant has used in their marketing pitches over the last year. Some true believers have the words Big Data tattooed on their arms like those mixed martial arts fighters sporting the names of casinos. Very attractive I say.
Because “big data” has sucked up search, content processing, and analytics, the term is usually not defined. The “problems” of Big Data are ignored. Since not much works when it comes to search and content processing, use of another undefined term is not particularly surprising. What caught my attention is that Datamation reports about some “lessons” its real journalists have tracked down and verified.
Please, read the entire original write up to get the full nine lessons. I want to highlight three of them:
First, Datamation points out that getting data from Point A to Point B can be tricky. I think that once the data has arrived at Point B, the next task is to get the data into a “Big Data” system. Datamation does not provide any cost information in its statement “Don’t underestimate the data integration challenges.” I would point out that the migration task can be expensive. Real expensive.
Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data's Big Problems”
The shuffle continues.
Retiring Marine colonel tells Congress he wasn't involved in Benghazi response
A retiring Marine colonel who commanded a special operations unit in Africa during the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, told Congress on Wednesday that an elite four-man team under his command was kept in the Libyan capital that night to prevent attacks there.
Col. George Bristol’s statement corroborates previous testimony by his subordinate officer, Army Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson. Gibson told the House Armed Services Committee in June that, contrary to previous media reports, he was not ordered to “stand down” by higher headquarters in response to the Benghazi attacks. Rather, Gibson’s team was told to stay in the city of Tripoli to defend Americans there in the event of additional attacks and to help survivors being evacuated from Benghazi, Bristol said.
Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Benghazi Testimony, Non-Disclosure, Rotten Communications”
