Journal: Hubris Loses to Angst & Reality–Every Time

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Last Shake for Last Coin

British student held over alleged airline bomb attempt

Nigerian man reportedly linked to al-Qaida in custody after foiled terror attempt on transatlantic flight to Detroit

Police identified the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. It is understood that he is an engineering student at University College London.

One official said the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over US soil.

Failed terror attack…Blizzard warning…Fuel spill in Alaskan waters

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials say the components of a failed explosive were apparently mixed onboard an international flight bound for Detroit. Passengers subdued a Nigerian man who was apparently burned when the device fizzled, but didn't explode.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. counterterrorism officials are trying to figure out if the failed bombing of an international flight preparing to land in Detroit reveals a serious new threat. Even though it burned but didn't explode, investigators wonder how the mixture allegedly used by a Nigerian man evaded detection

Phi Beta Iota: In the time immediately following 9/11 it was clearly established by multiple parties that our asymmetric opponents were spending $1 for every $500,000 we spent.  Today we speculate that the ratio is closer to $1 (them) to $5 million (us).  We lack a grasp of reality; we lack a strategy; we lack a force structure; and above all, we lack the moral high ground.  Imperial Hubris is what happens when government get “too big to fail” and then promptly collapse because they suffer from a culture that turns disaster into catastrophe.  Terrorism is the LEAST of our problems, but for the sake of avoiding argument we accept the United Nations High Level Panel's conclusion that terrorism is number nine out of ten high-level threats to humanity.  What we do every day to ourselves is easily a million times more threatening, more costly, and more immoral than anything a single terrorist or terrorist group–whatever their motivations–might do.  The BAD DECISIONS made by government are the real sucking chest wound for society, both in terms of perpetuating catastrophic industrial and weather changing practices, and in terms of failing to meet the fundamental needs of people who–if empowered with connectivity and education–would create infinite wealth in every clime and place.

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Journal: Life in the Cloud–Repeating Past Mistakes

Communities of Practice, Ethics, IO Secrets, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Full Story Online

January/February 2010

Security in the Ether

Information technology's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud–and prove we can trust it.

By David Talbot

Phi Beta Iota: The story is so good we will not extract from it.  It must be read in its entirety.  Government is failing to do its job, leaving a “wild west” environment alive and corruptible in the cloud.  Standards are beginning to emerge but security is not a priority and the end-user as the ultimate source of the security is not even being considered (over ten years ago Eric Hughes conceptualized anonymous banking and end-user controlled encryption of all data).  Eventually, after great expesne and great loss of data, government and industry may realize that the ultimate security is that which originates with the individual end-user, not a central service that can be hacked by disgruntled insiders or that can make a mistake that instantly explodes tens of millions of clients.  Below is the original Mich Kabay slide, still relevant.

Mich Kabay's Threat Slide Link Leads to NSA Las Vegas Briefing

Search: United Nations Intelligence Training

Communities of Practice, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Searches, Threats, Topics (All Other), True Cost, United Nations & NGOs, Worth A Look

INTELLIGENCE is DECISION-SUPPORT.  The process of intelligence is separate from whether the sources and methods are secret or not.  There is nothing secret, unethical, or illegal about the process of intelligence as decision-support.

Original “Class Before One” (2010 Class 001 in Planning)

2007 United Nations “Class Before One” Infomation-Sharing and Analytics Orientation

Other references:


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Worth a Look: Deep Web Multilingual Federated Search

Analysis, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Technologies, Threats

Deep Web Home Page
Deep Web Home Page

Deep Web Implements the Multilingual Search that Google Imagines

Donald A. DePalma 17 December 2009
Filed under (Translation & Localization, Translation Technologies)

In an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Google vice president for search products Marissa Mayer challenged the readership to “Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites.” We spoke with Abe Lederman, CEO of Deep Web Technologies, a technology supplier that already offers this multilingual search.

. . . . . . .

The bottom line: Multilingual search is not just a figment of Google’s imagination. It’s already here — you just have to dig a bit deeper to find it.

SANTA FE, N.M., Sept. 3, 2009 — Deep Web Technologies is proud to announce development of a prototype of a multilingual translation capability for clients using its federated search applications. An early prototype of multilingual searching was demonstrated to the members of the WorldWideScience Alliance in June of 2009. This new feature, when fully developed and implemented, will translate a user’s search query into the native language of the collections being searched, will translate result titles and snippets back to the user’s original language and aggregate and rank these results according to relevance. The translation process will be seamless, making it simple to search collections in multiple languages from a single search box in the native language of the user.

. . . . . .

Deep Web Technologies (http://www.deepwebtech.com) creates custom, sophisticated federated search solutions for clients who demand precise, accurate results. The tool of choice when needing to access the deep web, federated search performs real-time, parallel searches of multiple information sources, merging the results into one page. Serving Fortune 500 companies, the Science.gov Alliance (http://www.science.gov), the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Defense, Scitopia.org (http://www.scitopia.org), Nutrition.gov, WorldWideScience Alliance (http://www.worldwidescience.org) and a variety of other customers and partners, Deep Web Technologies has built a reputation as the “researcher’s choice” for its advanced, agile information discovery tools

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Journal: Well-Intentioned Idiocy Abounds….

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Mobile, Reform

Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Headlines Only:

Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes (Updated)

Spytech Agency Wants Software Brains to Connect the Dots

Training For The Civilian Surge

TSA Cannot Order Sites to Take Down Sensitive Manual

Headlines and Snippets Below the Fold with Phi Beta Iota Comment

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Journal: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected

WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.

logo cbs news
Full Story Online

Additional Insights from CBS News Beyond Wall Street Journal

The implications of the Predator's unencrypted transmissions have been known in military circles for a long time. An October 1999 presentation given at the Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies in Alabama noted “the Predator UAV is designed to operate with unencrypted data links.”

A 1996 briefing by Paul Kaminski, an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, may offer a hint about how the Iraqi's interception was done. Kaminski said that the military had turned to commercial satellites – “Hughes is the primary provider of direct (satellite) TV that you can buy in the United States, and that's the technology we're leveraging off of” – to share feeds from Predator drones.

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Journal: Four-Dimensional Digital Maps

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Four Dimensional Digital Maps
Four Dimensional Digital Maps

The graphic can be enlarged.  Two key points:

1.  We are finally getting to where geospatial and functional data can be merged in near-real-time.

2.  Intelligence Online remains our only “must read”

The question that is NOT being addressed is this one:  What will it take to create an infinitely scalable and drillable digital map of the Earth, using open source software and open to all, to which all manner of data in all languages can be appended, validated, and integrated?

noble gold