Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2665 – Public Intelligence Blog

The first meeting, in Assisi on Saturday 22 January 2011, was off the record. The letter is in the Franciscan Order's hands. The third meeting, with a major trans-Europe foundation, is off the record until the Secretary-General obtains approval to proceed with broad dissemination of the letter.

The second meeting, arranged by Sergio Germani, was by invitation and spanned the various sectors with an emphasis on the government ministries contemplating the need for an Italian national security strategy. This was the only meeting that covered anything other than the letter to the Most Holy Father.

Below are a few of the topics addressed and links that were recommended as part of the Q&A. At the very end are other Assisi Intelligence links. The short URL to the original link is http://www.tinyurl.com/Assisi-Intelligence.

Summary of topics (repeated with links below)

Letter to the Pope (First Order of Business)
9-11 (The Last Question)
21st Century Human Intelligence (HUMINT)
21st Century Information Security
21st Century Regional Intelligence
21st Century Security
21st Century Strategy (Italy, Europe, World)
Coping with Non-State CNBC/WMD
Emerging Threats: Identification and Response
Future of US Africa Command
Open Source Intelligence (US Status & Failure)
Terrorism Today and Tomorrow

Continue reading “Assisi-Rome 2nd Meeting”

2011/01/272011/01/27

Reference: NYT on WikiLeaks + RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

By BILL KELLER

The New York Times, January 26, 2011

Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times,” an ebook available for purchase at nytimes.com/opensecrets.

EXTRACT: The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, including low-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.”

Phi Beta Iota: Upgraded to a Reference because this nine part overview of the entire process is elegant, informative, and provocative. A very fine contribution of lasting value.

2011/01/27

WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide

Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Media, Military, Open Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

(text fr newsletter)
Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset
“The hacker generation is now employed by government, the military and corporate America, writes George Smith, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org.”

Workforce: Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset

By George Smith
Jan 26, 2011

George Smith is a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and a writer and commentator on the science and technology of national security.

Back in the early 1990s, I edited an electronic newsletter that dealt with the culture of amateur virus writers — hackers who wrote mobile malware. Julian Assange was a subscriber. This is only to illustrate Assange's bona fides as someone from the original world computer underground, a place where one of the driving philosophies was to reveal the secrets of institutional power.

Once confined to what was considered a computer geek fringe, that ideology is now entrenched. It's no longer an outsider mindset, and it hasn't been for a long time. Now it's inside, with its originators entering middle age. And younger adherents of the philosophy are coming along all the time.

They're everywhere — employed by government, the military and corporate America. And because we have come to the point that the United States is considered by some to be a bad global actor — whether you share that point of view or not — the government is faced with a problem it cannot solve. Its exposure is thought by many to be deserved.

Continue reading “WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide”

2011/01/272011/01/27

Carthage under Siege + Revolution Tyranny RECAP

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Mobile, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Interesting reading….

Middle East & North Africa: Carthage under Siege

By Feriel Bouhafa , January 26, 2011

Foreign Policy in Focus

The success of a throng of Tunisian protesters who toppled Ben Ali, the seemingly unshakable dictator, caught the world off guard.

Analysts have rushed to make sense of Tunisia's unforeseen popular revolt. The media have emphasized the economic discontent caused by unemployment, poverty, and high food prices. Others have noted the role social networks have played, characterizing the uprising as an instance of online activism and hailing it as a “Twitter revolution.”

This extraordinary uprising is being seen as the possible start of a domino effect in the Arab world.

. . . . . . .

Going forward, Tunisians will scrutinize the sincerity of these statements. The Obama administration’s initial hesitation exposed its unease with this transformation. U.S. policy and its national-security strategy in the Arab world need reassessment. Tunisia’s democratic impulse, as well as the uprising’s reverberations in other Arab countries, presents challenges for U.S. policy and that of its authoritarian allies in the region.

Phi Beta Iota: Most governments are under siege, for most governments, to one extent or another, have failed to attend to the public interest, instead bending or selling out completely to special interests. The United States of America is especially vulnerable at this time because it is over-extended, financially and morally bankrupt, and has a government that is out of touch with both the public interest, and global reality. Tunesia is not unique–all countries have the preconditions for revolution extant, what has changed are two things: the proliferation of precipitants, and the ability of the public to connect and promulgate.

2011/01/272011/01/27

Shared Madness At the Top of the Two-Party “System”

03 Economy, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Put another way, Simon Johnson is saying that Orientation (in the form of rigid pre-conceptions) is shaping the Observations as well as the Decisions and Actions (made in response to those observations). Any student of nonlinear dynamics and control theory will tell you that when a positive feedback loop like, Orientation's positive shaping effect, is pumping without interruption into a negative feedback control system, the entire system spins out of control and its outputs become increasingly disconnected from the real world environment that system is struggling to cope with. The inevitable result is chaos — full stop, end of story.

There Are Still No Fiscal Conservatives In The United States

By Simon Johnson, Basline Scenario, 26 Jan 2010

Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, there is a great deal of discussion about whether we might now be edging our way towards fiscal responsibility.

Unfortunately, most of our political elite – both left and right – is still living in a land of illusions. They cannot even seriously discuss what would be required to bring our true fiscal position under control – remember that most of the recent damage to our collective balance sheet was done by big banks blowing themselves up. No one who refuses to confront the power of those banks can be taken seriously as a fiscal conservative.

Even those interest groups that prominently espouse fiscal responsibility refuse to confront this reality. There are no fiscal conservatives in the United States; at this stage it is all pretence.

Pretence is apparently all we are likely to get, as long as the money keeps rolling in (see Argentina for details).

2011/01/272011/01/27

Event: 16-17 Feb, NYC, Intelligent Infrastructure hosted by The Economist

03 Economy, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Media, Non-Governmental

From their website: “The Economist believes that human progress relies on the advancement of good ideas. The Ideas Economy brings together top thinkers from around the world, and you, to discuss and debate the most important ideas of our time.”
Comment: “..the most important ideas of our time.” Cost: between $595-$1,595 (+$9.95 fee). Why not have a more affordable entrance fee if the ideas are the most important? At least stream the event live for a very affordable fee (or free).

Speakers:
+Vivek Kundra – Chief Information Officer US
+Frank Gehry – Partner of Gehry Partners
+Nicholas Negroponte – Founder/Chairman of One Laptop per Child
+Richard Newell – Admin U.S. Energy Info Admin
+Henry Cisneros – Chairman CityView
+Judith Rodin – President The Rockefeller Foundation
|
Programme/Agenda

2011/01/272011/01/27

Open Source Insurgency: No More Corruption

About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Threats

A Plausible Promise

by John Robb of Global Guerrillas

For an open source revolt (here's some background on “open source insurgency“) to be successfully formed, it needs a plausible promise. A meta issue around which all of the different factions etc. can form (remember, most of the groups and individuals involved in an open source revolt can't agree on anything but some basic concepts). A generic “day of revolt” doesn't accomplish that. What could?

Using the multi-million scale No Mas FARC protests as an example and the critical ingredient in the Tunisian protests (extreme corruption that generated an endless wellspring of anger/frustration), a potential “plausible promise” for an Egyptian open source revolt is:

No More Corruption

Not only is a movement opposing corruption something the government will find hard to oppose, it is something every Egyptian deals with on a daily basis. It also has the added benefit of directly harming the entrenched ruling elite, who are likely to become poster children of the very thing the movement is against.

Emerging Concept of Open Stewardship

Reference: Peace versus War–Competing Visions

Reference: WikiLeaks and Al Qaeda as Open Source Insurgencies

Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse