Policies – Page 746 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/12/172009/12/17

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

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.

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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2009/12/162011/10/22

Journal: Dean Breaks with Obama, Third Party Rumbles

07 Health, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Open Government

Dean says kill the Senate health bill: report

Dean tells Good Morning America that he thinks health bill should be scrapped: Video at bottom

WASHINGTON — Following the jettisoning of both the public option and the Medicare buy-in provision, one of the nation's leading progressive voices on health care reportedly said Tuesday that the Senate bill is no longer worth supporting.

Phi Beta Iota: Buried within the comments “Howard Dean with Cynthia mckinney, Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader would be a good group to get a real third party going. ” We add as a non-partisan observation that the principal figures representing the 70% of America that did not vote for the current Administration have failed to come together. Between Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party may be finding that Sarah Palin and Ron Paul are looking a lot more reasonable. Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Jackie Salit have the power–not yet exercised–to bring America together on the ONE THING we can all agree on: the Electoral Reform Act of 2010.

2009/12/162009/12/16

Journal: NRO, KR to AF, Open IC?, Piracy vs Piracy

Ethics, Government, Key Players, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Struggling Spy Satellite Agency Tries to Right Itself

National Defense January 2010

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for developing and launching the U.S. fleet of spy satellites, is embarking on an ambitious plan to right itself after years of cost overruns and program cancellations.

But two powerful senators have opposed the office’s plans to launch the next generation of classified spacecraft. Personnel issues, namely a shortage of qualified personnel, may also impede progress.

Up To 56,000 More Contractors Likely For Afghanistan, Congressional Agency Says

The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Consumer group blasts White House's digital piracy pow-wow

Led by Vice President Joe Biden, the meeting “is the first of its kind, and will bring together all of the stakeholders to discuss ways to combat piracy in this rapidly changing technological age,” according to the White House.

On Tuesday morning, a prominent consumer advocacy group took the White House to task for the lopsided guest list of the meeting, which did not include “consumer or public-interest groups, technology companies, technology associations or Internet Service Providers.”

Open government could present a challenge to intelligence agencies

The release of the open government directive could change intelligence agencies' policies that deny Internet access to nonclassified data that is currently available only in hard copy or only to government personnel, say some Washington transparency advocates.

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2009/12/15

Journal: Fiscal Responsibility 101

03 Economy

Washington – Tear Down Your Wall Against Currency Competition

December 15th, 2009 by Ron Holland

Although the faltering dollar could rebound in the short run, the longer-term prognosis is terminal unless Washington dramatically reduces spending and borrowing. When the global run on treasury debt and the dollar develops, the current relative minor fluctuations in values will be replaced by a virulent death spiral of historic proportions seen few times in world history.

Phi Beta Iota: Above is just one of hundreds of stories along the same lines.

2009/12/152010/09/02

Event Report: UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy Among Civil Society in Southeast Asia

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

Home Page

The Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation and Nahdatul Ulama (NU), with support from the governments of Germany and Sweden, co-hosted a workshop in Jakarta on 18-19 November 2009 to raise awareness of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy among civil society in Southeast Asia and explore the possibilities for greater civil society participation in efforts to implement the global framework in a manner that reflects the local contexts, needs, and prioriti es across the region. Participants in the workshop included representatives from civil society from across Southeast Asia working on an array of issues related to the implementation of the UN Strategy. The workshop aimed to build on the rich contributions of civil society to furthering human security in Southeast Asia and lay the foundations for the development of a civil society network related to the issues covered in the UN Strategy.

Click here to read the meeting summary.

Click here to read the background paper.

Press Coverage (Nine Links):

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2009/12/152009/12/15

Reference: American Health Care Compared

07 Health, Briefings (Core)

Phi Beta Iota: The briefing below, flagged by Chuck Spinney from the New America Foundation, fails to make the one really big point: that PriceWaterHouseCoopers has found that 50% of all health care spending in the USA is WASTE. However, given the profit motive, that waste generates overhead, and so there is no incentive for our greedy irresponsible health care corporations, who have fulfilled all Congressional demands for bribes, to actually try to deliver the best care at the lowest price. In that light, our health care is actually better than everyone elses, we just charge twice as much as we should. The other point that the Obama Administration is assiduously avoiding is the cost of Medicare drugs–the so-called “reform,” which is not a reform at all, just the health equivalent of the Wall Street bail-out, finally seeks to acquire drugs at Canadian price levels, or 10% of what we pay now, but avoids completely the disclosure of the fact that other countries such as Thailand and South Africa pay 1% of what we pay, not 10%. There is so much dishonesty across every aspect of the health care “dialog” (more like theater of the macabre) that we don't find it at all surprising to see Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) right in the middle of BOTH the Wall Street bailout with unlimited bonuses, AND the health care debacle.

New America Web Site

2009/12/152009/12/15

Journal: CNN & Fox Ignore Peace Rally, Others Notice

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Media

Full Story Online

EndWar Protest Website

UPDATED:

15 Dec 09

Protest? What Protest?

By Dave Lindorff
The Public Record
Dec 15th, 2009

In what passes for corporate journalism in America, this concept has taken the form of, “If we don’t report on it, it didn’t happen.”

That certainly was the case for the emergency protest organized by a coalition of anti-war organizations under the banner EndUSWars.org, which saw over 1000 people gather on short notice in the bitter cold on Lafayette Park opposite the White House to protest President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan on Saturday, Dec. 12.

Not a word about this impromptu protest, which included many people who had supported the election of President Obama only a year ago, appeared in the New York Times. Nor did the Washington Post bother to mention the protest in its own back yard, not even in its Metro section pages. The other national newspaper, USA Today, likewise blacked out news of the protest.

Topic: War

Peace Movement Says Hello World

A new anti-war coalition based at EndUSwars.org held its first rally on Saturday, Dec. 12 2009 outside the U.S. White House.

by John Kusumi (centrist liberal) Monday, December 14, 2009

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Full Story Online EndWar Protest Website UPDATED: 15 Dec 09

Protest? What Protest?

Topic: War

Peace Movement Says Hello World A new anti-war coalition based at EndUSwars.org held its first rally on Saturday, Dec. 12 2009 outside the U.S. White House.

Full Story Online

EndWar Protest Website

UPDATED:

15 Dec 09

Peace Movement Says Hello World

A new anti-war coalition based at EndUSwars.org held its first rally on Saturday, Dec. 12 2009 outside the U.S. White House.