Category: Information Operations (IO)

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Jean Lievens: What We Need in NextGen Social Network – The Next Web (Facebook Is For Grandparents)

Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Impotency
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

By , Sunday, 24 Nov '13 , 10:25pm

It’s time to move on. The feeling is becoming more and more significant with each passing day and it just keeps spreading.

It’s just not it any more… we want something new, exciting, which can take us places we’ve never been. We want to be surprised again. We want a new, better social network.

Facebook may say its user base is growing, but original members from the last decade appear to be leaving in droves. As more niche networking services and platforms enter the space, people are finding that not any one company is serving all of their networking needs. Our tastes and channels are becoming fragmented, and users are pushing back on accepted norms in the social media space.

This is inevitable. It’s a natural life cycle for any product; unless it somehow becomes a living organism with its own reproductive system and evolution, one will eventually wither and die. Facebook cannot evade this process – it regenerates with nuances, but is not reinventing itself.

Facebook today doesn’t resemble a thriving, living metropolis – it’s more of a friendly neighborhood bar. For that reason, FB will face its cruel destiny of simply fading away. Living in the same city as your parents is forgiven and acceptable; there is enough diversity and distance between everyone. But finding yourself sitting in the same bar as your mom and dad – that’s horrifying. When your father posts pictures of sunsets and breakfast on his wall you know it’s over.

The conclusion is undeniable; a new social network is needed. These are the things that will make it awesome and sustainable:

Read full article for details.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: What We Need in NextGen Social Network – The Next Web (Facebook Is For Grandparents)”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Mats Bjore and SILOBREAKER

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commercial Intelligence
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Exclusive Silobreaker Interview: Mats Bjore, Silobreaker

With Google becoming more difficult to use, many professionals need a way to locate, filter, and obtain high value information that works. Silobreaker is an online service and system that delivers actionable information.

The co-founder of Silobreaker said in an exclusive interview for Search Wizards Speaks says:

I learned that in most of the organizations, information was locked in separate silos. The information in those silos was usually kept under close control by the silo manager. My insight was that if software could make available to employees the information in different silos, the organization would reap an enormous gain in productivity. So the idea was to “break” down the the information and knowledge silos that exists within companies, organizations and mindsets.

And knock down barriers the system has. Silobreaker’s popularity is surging. The most enthusiastic supporters of the system come from the intelligence community, law enforcement, analysts, and business intelligence professionals. A user’s query retrieves up-to-the-minute information from Web sources, commercial services, and open source content. The results are available as a series of summaries, full text documents, relationship maps among entities, and other report formats. The user does not have to figure out which item is an advertisement. The Silobreaker system delivers muscle, not fatty tissue.

Mr. Bjore, a former intelligence officer, adds:

Silobreaker is an Internet and a technology company that offers products and services which aggregate, analyze, contextualize and bring meaning to the ever-increasing amount of digital information.

Underscoring the difference between Silobreaker and other online systems, Mr. Bjore points out:

What sets us apart is not only the Silobreaker technology and our commitment to constant innovation. Silobreaker embodies the long term and active experience of having a team of users and developers who can understand the end user environment and challenges. Also, I want to emphasize that our technology is one integrated technology that combines access, content, and actionable outputs.

The ArnoldIT team uses Silobreaker in our intelligence-related work. We include a profile of the system in our lectures about next-generation information gathering and processing systems.

You can get more information about Silobreaker at www.silobreaker.com. A 2008 interview with Mr. Bjore is located at on the Search Wizards Speak site at http://goo.gl/f7niAH.

Stephen E Arnold, November 25, 2013

Phi Beta Iota: We also use SILOBREAKER and recommend it to the US Government, among others.  We do not use Palantir (nor will we ever) and we are in the process of disengaging from all aspects of Google. Integrity matters. SILOBREAKER has integrity where others fall short.

See Also:

Mats Bjore at Phi Beta Iota

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NATO WATCH: Time for a No-Spy Zone? Or More Realistically, Time for EU/NATO to Discover Open Source Intelligence with Integrity?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, IO Privacy, IO Secrets, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence

nato watchNATO Watch Comment:

Time to establish a ‘No Spy Zone' in NATO?

By Dr Ian Davis, NATO Watch Director

22 November 2013

www.natowatch.org Promoting a more transparent and accountable NATO

Disclosure of US intelligence surveillance activities in Germany and other allied countries has aroused angry political and public reaction in those countries. The whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed close technical cooperation and a loose alliance between British, German, French, Spanish and Swedish spy agencies. The German Government in particular has expressed disbelief and fury at the revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored Angela Merkel's mobile phone calls. Even the Secretary General of the UN is regarded as fair game by the NSA.

But questions concerning the integrity and professionalism of UK and US intelligence services are nothing new. In March 2003, GCHQ‘whistleblower’ Katharine Gun revealed in a leaked email that the NSA was eavesdropping on UN Security Council diplomats belonging to the group of ‘swing nations’ that were undecided on the question of war against Iraq. The NSA requested the help of its British counterparts at GCHQ to collect information on those diplomats.

Continue reading “NATO WATCH: Time for a No-Spy Zone? Or More Realistically, Time for EU/NATO to Discover Open Source Intelligence with Integrity?”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Google Corrupts WordPress

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Phi Beta Iota: Above is our title. We continue to be dismayed by the lack of ethics and the predatory pervasiveness of Google manipulation of search results depending on the degree to which it is paid in cash or information. Google is corrupt.  Google is corrupting everything it touches.

Google Plus Grafted Onto WordPress

Posted: 18 Nov 2013 11:40 AM PST

The article on c/net titled WordPress Folds in Google Plus For Authentication, Comments offers insight into the new changes. Justin Shreve from WordPress described the benefits of the deal as increasing the verification of ones’ posts by creating an “official connection” between the Google Plus Profile and WordPress.com content that is being generated.

The article explains:

“WordPress, the widely used blogging system, has built in Google+ technology that will let publishers use the service for authentication, comments, and sharing.

The deal, announced Monday, spreads Google’s influence into a Web site that’s very widely used for blogs and other self-publishing needs. Even as it elevates the profile of Google’s social-networking technology, though, it also lowers barriers between Google+ and other parts of the Web. “

There’s nothing like forcing an agenda, but both companies seem to benefit from this deal, with WordPress users able to send their content to Google Plus with a feature called publicize, as well as receive a more prominent position in search results. Google will gain more information about its users from the pages created, improving search result accuracy. Furthermore, WordPress users will now be able to embed onto their WordPress sites what they have published on Google Plus.

Chelsea Kerwin, November 24, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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Jean Lievens: Imaging Intelligence and the New Digital Industrial Economy

Advanced Cyber/IO
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Imaging Intelligence and the New Digital Industrial Economy

By 2020, as the digitization of business increases, nearly everything we use will be embedded with cameras and sensors — our smart phones, our self-driving cars, our wearables, and our traffic lights will all depend on imaging technology. What does this mean for the future and what will we do with all this data?

During this time, in every industry, from transportation to medicine, the Internet of Things and its technology ecosystem will have created an $8.9 trillion market. Of that ecosystem, the combined IT and telecom market will hit almost $4 trillion, or 5 percent of the global GDP, according to this year’s Gartner Symposium in Orlando.

We are looking at the dawn of a new economy, says Peter Sondegaard, senior VP at Gartner and global head of research at Gartner, clarifying, “[it’s] a new era: the Digital Industrial Economy [that will] result in revenue associated with the Internet of Things exceeding $309 billion per year.”

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

The Internet of Things is going to require heavy-duty processing of all that information, too. It will depend on our ability to capture, store, sort and analyze images. Given that over 100 hours of YouTube® videos and 500 million photos are uploaded and shared every single day, we’re looking at a massive amount of unstructured data. So how can we turn those pixels into actionable, visual data?

This is where the power of intelligent imaging turns dumb pixels into smart images. Intelligent imaging essentially brings visual data to life, thereby opening up a whole new level of effective and mutually influential interaction opportunities. The smartest businesses are already taking advantage of the unique ability to directly reach consumers while others are ramping up to do so.

Imaging Puts Big Data At Our Fingertips

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Imaging Intelligence and the New Digital Industrial Economy”

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David Isenberg: The Perils of Privatizing Intelligence

IO Impotency
David Isenberg
David Isenberg

Ever since former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden started revealing national Security Agency documents earlier this year there has been renewed debate about what is the proper balance between public and private sector roles and participation in the intelligence community.  This is an issue, which, in recent years, has periodically come up, but has not received the same critical scrutiny in the sustained way the role of private military and security contractors operating in Iraq or Afghanistan has.

But with the advantage of hindsight there were warning signs long before Snowden appeared on the scene. For example, consider an article published in a past issue of the Brown Journal of World Affairs (Fall 2011). The author is Armin Krishnan, a visiting assistant professor of security studies at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of the book War as Business.

The first thing to note is that he is not, per se, opposed to privatizing some functions of the intelligence community which, traditionally, have been held to be an “inherently governmental” function and, thus, only to be performed by government workers. He writes, “The outsourcing of intelligence gathering is not necessarily a problem in itself and is certainly nothing new in the United States. The U.S. government has a long history of reliance on contractors and private companies in the field of intelligence.”

That said, he still thinks intelligence outsourcing has gone too far.  Among his reasons:

The trend toward intelligence privatization and outsourcing is a cause for concern for many reasons. First, it breeds corruption and gross inefficiency. Second, it has resulted in massive abuses of civil liberties and human rights. Third, it weakens the quality of intelligence products, as national intelligence becomes dominated by private interests with strong incentives for biased reporting. Fourth, it creates difficulties for the control and oversight of intelligence activities, as it is more difficult for the government to monitor contracted companies and private companies have less obligation to turn over information to congressional oversight bodies. Fifth, in the long term, it will cause a loss of core competencies and expertise to the private sector, especially as it concerns technology.

Read full article.

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