Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2324 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/02/12

Berto Jongman: From the Edge of the Abyss – FBI, DNS Routers, Mossad & You – Back-Up Everything, Wait and See?

I do not know what this means but it is interesting.

February 11, 2012

Planned US Internet Blackout On March 8 Raises Concerns

By: Sorcha Faal

A disturbing Ministry of Trade report circulating in the Kremlin today is raising serious concerns over the United States plan to shut down significant parts of the Internet on 8 March in a move many Russian experts warn could be a prelude to massive attacks against the growing number of dissidents in that country.

According to this report, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will unplug on 8 March the Domain Name System (DNS) servers it set up to replace rogue DNS servers that sent victims to malicious sites. A report on Infoworld said the removal of this temporary fix may affect “a substantial number” of users, as half of Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies are infected with the malware, not to mention tens-of-millions of privately owned American computers.

Read rest of article.

Phi Beta Iota: When government gets into areas it really does not fully understand, “first do no harm” and the precautionary principle should be foremost in the managing agency head's mind. There is also the matter of the Israeli Mossad and their long history of penetrating governments with malware, ostensibly in pursuit of their own “higher good” never mind the cost to others. Bottom line: A few extraordinary successes aside, no one seems to have a grip on the cyber terrain over which their diplomatic, information, military, and economic communications are running.

2012/02/12

Berto Jongman: Catalog of Social Media & Related Tools

Advanced Cyber/IO

A Catalogue of Social Media (and Related) Tools

Alan Rosenblatt

BigThink, 7 Feburary 2012

I have assembled a catalogue of 85 tools to help you run a more effective social media program for your campaign, organization, or business. Most of these are free. A lot are for Twitter. Many help you leverage Facebook and other social media too. Some help you find the best content to share via social media.

Some of these tools are more useful than others. But I expect you will disagree over which are the most and least useful. That is why I have included such a wide range of tools.

You will find tools for measuring, monitoring, and engaging your social media audience.

If you know of more tools worth adding to this list, I encourage you to post them in the comments.

Have fun exploring these. There are some real gems in here.

Full list, links, and descriptions below the line.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Catalog of Social Media & Related Tools”

2012/02/122012/02/12

Penguin: “Or Your Lying Eyes…” Truth and Fiction in the News Business – Conspiracy of Lies While US Networks Prepare & Rehearse for Israeli Attack on Iran

Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military

“Or Your Lying Eyes…” Truth and Fiction in the News Business

Alex Cockburn

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition February 10-12, 2012

If you want a sense of what could well lie in store for Syria, go no further than Anthony Shadid’s report from Libya in the New York Times for February 9. Shadid, a good reporter, describes a dismembered country, rent by banditry.

EXTRACT:

As Byrne reported,

“Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the ‘regime change’ alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams allocated US$130 billion to ‘palliate the masses’ of the Arab Spring).

What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, ‘facts’, and often exaggerated claims of ‘massacres’ and even recently ‘genocide’.”

And from the Arab League Report:

Continue reading “Penguin: “Or Your Lying Eyes…” Truth and Fiction in the News Business – Conspiracy of Lies While US Networks Prepare & Rehearse for Israeli Attack on Iran”

2012/02/122012/02/12

Owl: Shyness, Grieving Classified as Mental Illness Treatable by Drugs, Incarceration of Sane Next?

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Uncategorized

An article like this poses the question – who is really insane, psychiatrists or the people they treat? When readers finish this article, they may vote for the former.

“In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts said its new categories and “tick-box” diagnosis systems were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous.” Some diagnoses – for conditions like “oppositional defiant disorder” and “apathy syndrome” – risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medicalising behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said. At the other end of the spectrum, the new DSM, due out next year, could give medical diagnoses for serial rapists and sex abusers – under labels like “paraphilic coercive disorder” – and may allow offenders to escape prison by providing what could be seen as an excuse for their behavior, they added.

Continue reading “Owl: Shyness, Grieving Classified as Mental Illness Treatable by Drugs, Incarceration of Sane Next?”

2012/02/112012/08/24

8 June & 13 July, London, “Understanding & Improving Intelligence Analysis” [Brunel University, Dr. Stephen Marrin]

Analysis

RESULTS: Understanding and Improving Intelligence Analysis

BCISS Forum on Intelligence Analysis–January 2012

Dr. Stephen Marrin
Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies
Department of Politics and History
Brunel University
Uxbridge (West London), England
stephen.marrin@brunel.ac.uk
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/research/research-centres/bciss

Phi Beta Iota: As anticipated, nothing really original here. As not anticipated, there is nothing at all from any other discipline. The point that intelligence theory and practice today is retarded, and that all of the other disciplines are themselves fragmented into incoherence, appears to have escaped the organizers.

Stephen Marrin: Evaluating the Quality of Intelligence Analysis: By What (Mis) Measure? With Comment by Robert Steele

2012/02/112012/02/11

Berto Jongman: Anonymous Takes Down CIA Website + RECAP

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Military

This refers to the external publicity site, not to any analytic or operational system.

Anonymous Takes Down CIA Website

Hacker group Anonymous on Friday took down the website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), online publication PC Magazine reported.

The website is still offline.

“CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous,” the @YourAnonNews feed tweeted.

Anonymous did not make public the attack’s details, but the group’s hackers normally use distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to knock their targets offline.

“We are aware of the problems accessing our website, and are working to resolve them,” CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said Friday night as quoted by the CNN.

Last month, Anonymous briefly took down the websites of the Department of Justice and the FBI in retaliation for the Megaupload file sharing site’s shutdown.

Phi Beta Iota: The solution was clearly stated in 1994 and again in 2010. Until the US Government gets a grip on “Smart Nation” and “Whole Earth” concepts of security at the code level, migrating to open source software across the board, and reinforcing all the shared nodes, it will continue to be easy to take down individual capabilities. And if all else fails, most systems can be taken down by cutting their obvious external big wires and/or their satellite downlinks, most easily reachable from outside the wire with various means.

2012/02/112012/02/11

Owl: Gulag Wealth Fund – Tracking Predatory Capitalism

03 Economy, 11 Society, 12 Water

Gulag Wealth Fund

In a recent and very interesting interview with author Cory Doctorow, he mentions Max Keiser’s “Gulag Wealth Fund”. Doctorow says:

“And there's this symbiotic relationship between criminalization or prohibition, and the people who benefit from enforcement, right? There's a rogue economist named Max Keiser who has a notional fund, just a fund on paper that you can buy into if you wanted to follow a stock. It's called the Gulag Wealth Fund, [and is comprised of] private prison companies, mercenaries, arms dealers, and so on. Basically, his theory is that if the Gulag Wealth index goes up, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And the Gulag Wealth index has been soaring.” (my emphasis)

Interview .. Gulag Wealth Fund

I wonder how long it will take before someone sets up an actual fund of this type and makes a lot of money?

Continue reading “Owl: Gulag Wealth Fund – Tracking Predatory Capitalism”