11 Society – Page 239 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/082011/09/08

Chuck Spinney: Bin Laden, Perpetual War, Total Cost + Perpetual War RECAP

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Government, Hacking, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Osama bin Laden repeatedly said that his strategy for defeating the US and driving it out of the Middle East was to bankrupt the US by suckering it into a string expensive of never ending small wars. Osama may be dead, but the US remains locked in a state of perpetual wars abroad and shrinking civil liberties at home.

So was Osama right?

The dismaying debt ceiling spectacle in Congress is revealing in one psychological sense: A clear majority of US politicians now believe (I think incorrectly [1]) that the US federal government is bankrupt.

On this anniversary of 9-11, in addition to remembering the dead and the sacrifices of the living, we ought to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if America was taken to the cleaners by a Saudi whack job of Yemeni extraction. One way to start is by trying to figure out what kind of cash hemorrhage was triggered by our reaction to Osama's attack. My good friend Winslow Wheeler has been grappling with this problem, and his answer below is not pretty.

Chuck Spinney
Sanary sur Mer, France

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Five Trillion and Counting

What Has Been the Real Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars?

by WINSLOW T. WHEELER, Counterpunch

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Bin Laden, Perpetual War, Total Cost + Perpetual War RECAP”

2011/09/072011/09/07

Venessa Miemis: Libraries as Hackerspaces?

04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Hacking

Are Libraries the Hackerspaces of the Future?

September 7, 2011

As I was reading through the projects coming to our upcoming Contact Summit in NYC next month, I was inspired by a few people who are reimagining what a library could be.

Library Turns Hackerspace

Perhaps you’ve heard the term hackerspace, or something along a similar vein, like makerspace, makerlab, or fab lab. Wikipedia defines it as

“a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. Hackerspaces can be viewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things.”

Click on Image to Enlarge

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: Note the Weberian centralized Dewey system on the left, and the chaordic vivaciousness on the right. This is what digital freedom and cultural freedom make possible.

2011/09/07

DefDog: Nation’s Top Cops Slam US Intelligence

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement

Failure, across the board…..implications of this for domestic security abound…..where has all the money gone?

Report: Nation's Top Cops Say U.S. Counterterror Effort Is Lacking

Ten years after 9/11, top cops in the nation's biggest cities feel there
are still significant gaps in the intelligence and analysis they receive
about terrorism, even as the homegrown terror threat looms larger.

A survey of intelligence commanders from America's 56 biggest cities conducted by the Homeland Security Policy Institute found the police chiefs believe the nation's intelligence enterprise is less robust than it could be, and that 62 percent of the chiefs felt this lack left them “unable to develop a complete understanding of their local threat.”

Read full article.

Read full report.

Phi Beta Iota: The “top cops” are great people, they just do not understand that the terror threat is fradulent and that the homeland security industrial complex is working precisely as intended, wasting hundreds of billions on fraudulent dysfunctional white and white-collar employment while channeling hundreds of billions in unearned profits to the homeland security industrial complex.

No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

2011/09/07

Patrick Meier: OpenStreetMap Micro-Tasking Imagery

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Geospatial, Hacking, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Real Time, Threats, United Nations & NGOs

OpenStreetMap’s New Micro-Tasking Platform for Satellite Imagery Tracing

September 7, 2011

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) response to Haiti remains one of the most remarkable examples of what’s possible when volunteers, open source software and open data intersect. When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck on January 12th, 2010, the Google Map of downtown Port-au-Prince was simply too incomplete to be used for humanitarian response. Within days, however, several hundred volunteers from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) commu-nity used satellite imagery to trace roads, shelters, and other features to create the most detailed map of Haiti ever created.

Read full posting with graphics.

See other Patrick Meier contributions at Phi Beta Iota.

2011/09/072011/09/07

Penguin: CIA’s Metamorphis Into the Drone Machine

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War

If you build it, they will come….

CIA's Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs

Gareth Porter

The World News, 6 September 2011

EXTRACT:

The shift in the CIA mission's has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency's entire workforce, according to the Post report.

The agency's analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.

More than one-third of the personnel in the agency's analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analysing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.

Read full article.

2011/09/06

Mother Jones: Exclusive on Koch Brother’s Game Plan

11 Society, Corporations, Corruption, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

parker cartoon — Illustration: Parker Brothers

Exclusive: The Koch Brothers' Million-Dollar Donor Club

By Gavin Aronsen

Mother Jones, Tue Sep. 6, 2011

Read our inside account of the Koch brothers' Vail seminar, and listen to the exclusive audio.

Twice a year, the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch host secretive retreats for an exclusive list of corporate America's rich and powerful to strategize and raise money for their right-wing political agenda. Mother Jones has obtained exclusive audio recordings that shed some light on the brothers' latest retreat, held at a resort near Vail, Colorado, in late June.

Listen to the audio and read the roster of names and donations….

Phi Beta Iota: What really strikes our editors is that these billionaires are buying governments for chump change–each is contributing in the very low millions and often in the very low hundred thousands. One hundred million citizens giving $20 each would create a $2 billion war chest for democracy. Go figure.

2011/09/062011/09/06

Paul Fernhout: How Security Clearance Process Harms National Security by Eradicating Cognitive Diversity

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats

This essay discusses how the USA's security clearance process (mainly related to ensuring secrecy) may have a counter-productive negative effect on the USA's national security by reducing “cognitive diversity” among security professionals. Background refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy

Scott Page wrote an insightful book about the value of “cognitive diversity” in making effective groups, called The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. From a review:

“Rather than ponder moral questions like, ‘Why can't we all get along?' Dr. Page asks practical ones like, ‘How can we all be more productive together?' The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.”

Ralph J. Perro (a pseudonym) wrote an essay called: “Interviewing With An Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade)”. From the document:

“After the process was over, I was talking to one of my references – a veteran Silicon Valley software executive, and former manager of mine. My reference commented on what transpired “That’s disappointing. If they can’t hire you, I have no idea who they can hire. That process seems to be designed to retain only the most bland.” The ‘bland’ comment might be a bit severe, however, considering the 1999 External Management report it would appear that the agency would appear to need creative thinkers & problem-solvers more than ever.”

What happens if you think about both of these together and consider the implications for US national security?

Continue reading “Paul Fernhout: How Security Clearance Process Harms National Security by Eradicating Cognitive Diversity”