Journal: Second Amendment versus “Police Pirvacy”

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Rodney King Video Wiki Page

Police fight cellphone recordings: Witnesses taking audio of officers arrested, charged with illegal surveillance

Crooked cops in Boston arresting citizens for recording misconduct with cellphones

Don't Tase Me Bro Wiki

Phi Beta Iota: The police will not only lose this one, we anticipate that one day the Second Amendment will apply to radar detectors and other forms of defense against state excesses.  Certainly the public needs to take its right to be armed–both with weapons and with hip-pocket recording devices, with the utmost seriousness.

Three observations:

1.  Society has forgotten how to be civil at the same time that government has forgotten how to govern (satisfy most of the people most of the time, deal humanely with the rest).

2.  Police have become increasingly militarized and the 9/11 pork has made them more so, at the same time that the FBI and similar forms of authority have forgotten how to do arrests without a SWAT team crashing through the door first.

3.  If you tell the truth and act according to the truth, such counter-surveillance is utlimately beneficial to the truth teller rather than the abuser.

Ultimately, in our view, public use of public technologies to create public intelligence about police abuse and government waste and corporate externalizations of cost (Taiwan now pays for citizen cell recordings of pollution discharges), will be a beneficial means of restoring the public's power over “it's” police forces.

Journal: Haiti–Ready for a Rapid-Response Open-Source-Intelligence-Driven Inter-Agency Multinational Multifunctional Stabilization & Reconstruction Mission…

01 Brazil, 01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time
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AP: Injured Haitians plead for help after quake

Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after the strongest earthquake hit the poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from humble shacks to the National Palace and the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon's 7.0-magnitude tremor, or to estimate how many were dead among the collapsed buildings in Haiti's capital of about 2 million people.

France's foreign minister said the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was apparently among the dead.

Full Story Online

Phi Beta Iota: This is precisely what was briefed recently to the DIA Multinational Intelligence Fellows and earlier in Tampa to the Coalition Coordination Center (CCC) and unnoticed by DIA as well as declined by CENTCOM as a transition model toward a Multinational Decision Support Center.  The US Government does well enough with little things that can be handled by one agency, or one thing that must be handled by multiple agencies, but it does not do well as all with many things that must be handled by many players on a no-notice basis.  The reason: a C4I system that is high-side unilateral expensive and largely useless past one big contingency.  The solution: a global grid that is unclassified (commercial-level security) and open to everyone.  DIA has enormous potential as a hub for Multinational Engagement and defense-rooted open source exploitation that also impacts on the QDR and acquisition while providing Combatant Commanders with relevant unclassified intelligence for COIN and other challenges.

See Also:

Continue reading “Journal: Haiti–Ready for a Rapid-Response Open-Source-Intelligence-Driven Inter-Agency Multinational Multifunctional Stabilization & Reconstruction Mission…”

Reference: Intelligence-Led Peacekeeping

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, DoD, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats, United Nations & NGOs
Dorn on UN PKI Haiti FINAL

Professor Walter Dorn is the virtual Dean of peacekeeping intelligence scholarship, going back to the Congo in the 1960's when Swedish SIGINT personnel spoke Swahli fluently and the UN stunned the belligerents with knowledge so-gained.  This is the final published version of the article posted earlier in author's final draft.

The UN is now ready for a serious discussion about a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) but a Member nation must bring it up, as the Secretary General has kindly informed us in correspondence.

In the absence of US interest, we are asking Brazil, China, and India to bring it up.  Should a UNODIN working group be formed, it will certainly include African Union (AU), Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) counterpart groups, as the regional networks will do the heavy lifting and be the super-hubs for the UN (this is in contrast to a US DoD-based system in which military-to-military hubs would be established to do two-way reachback among the eight tribes in the respective nations).  Both concepts are explored in the new book, INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH and in two DoD briefings that are also relevant to the QDR.

Journal: Comment on DIA Potential

Ethics, Key Players, Methods & Process, Military, Mobile, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Richard Wright

The QDR slides got me thinking about the fact that DIA could be a really first rate intelligence agency and an effective counter to ODNI and CIA for the SecDef, JCS, and the military services, especially field commanders.

Although badly executed, DIA has two vitally important missions: support to military operations; and support to military strategy formulation. Unfortunately, DIA has always suffered from unimaginative senior leadership and the worst form of military thinking whereby rank trumps truth and an incompetent major trumps a competent lieutenant.

If DIA is going to achieve its potential and rally to provide the best intelligence possible to the SecDef, JCS, and service field commanders it needs to break free from the military hierarchical thinking and its influences on intelligence judgments.

In point of fact DIA has and has always had an excellent group of military and civilian analysts working there although there is a constant churn due to service requirements and limited prospects for civilians.

So what does DIA need? It needs an influx of original (out of the box) strategists who can visualize and articulate the multi-level threats to U.S. National Security, who understand the phenomenon of globalization and its effect on DOD strategic thinking, and can effectively relate such 21st Century phenomenon as trans-national asymmetric warfare to U.S. force and command structures.

Perhaps most importantly, DIA needs to build a capability to exploit the fact that increasing amounts of information relative to DOD concerns that are actually available from open sources. At the same time DIA needs to introduce much more effective information management systems to support its intelligence production.

Phi Beta Iota: This  comment is repeated from the QDR OSINT thread.  We've been saying this for 21 years.  Perhaps we should have shouted.   The two DoD OSINT briefings and the future of OSINT material are now circulating among presidential staffs of a handful of other countries.  They get it, we don't.  How sad is that?

Worth a Look: Open Design

Collaboration Zones, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, True Cost, Worth A Look

Wikipedia Page

Open design is the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation. The goals and philosophy are identical to open source, but reside in a different paradigm.

Phi Beta Iota: The emergent Open Design community is a bit too focused on products, i.e. open source hardware.  Open Design can and should apply to all processes, all services, all products.  Unlike the assembly line focus on the Industrial Era, Open Design would integrate 360 degree cultural values (e.g. organic food to slow food to food-based dialog) and fully integrate the humanities with the mechanics to achieve Consilience.

Worth a Look: Citizen Science

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Worth A Look

Wikipedia Page

Citizen science is a term used for projects or ongoing program of scientific work in which individual volunteers or networks of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or computation.

The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible. In addition, these projects aim to promote public engagement with the research, as well as with science in general. Some programs provide materials specifically for use by primary or secondary school students. As such, citizen science is one approach to informal science education.

Phi Beta Iota: Citizen Science is in its infancy, but with the emergence of open source software and open source intelligence combinations such as represented by SourceMap.org, Citizen Intelligence and Citizen Counterintelligence are sure to be coming along soon….and if combined with multi-lingual networks such as provided by Telelanguage, a global multinational citizen information-sharing and sense-making grid can be created that implements the Swedish vision of M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.  This has enormous implications for both real-time science and real-time warning as well as real-time Emergency Action.

Journal: WIRED to IC–You’re Tired, Get Wired….

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

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Pink Slips, Spyblogs, and More New Year’s Resolutions for the Intelligence Community

Michael Tanji spent nearly 20 years in the US intelligence community. A veteran of the US Army, Michael has served in both strategic and tactical assignments worldwide, and has participated in national and international analysis and policy efforts, including projects for the NIC, NSC and NATO. A Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow. Michael lectures on intelligence issues at The George Washington University. He is also an occassional contributor to the Weekly Standard and is the editor of _Threats in the Age of Obama.

A near-successful bombing on Christmas, a suicide attack on the CIA — it’s been a rotten ten days for the U.S. Intelligence Community. And unless things change in a serious way, the spy agencies can expect many more rotten days ahead. But there are some steps that the IC can take in 2010 that could mean fewer failures, more success, and more lives saved. Think of them as New Years’ resolutions for the spy agencies.

Pink Slips.    Go All In for 2.0.    Align Policy with Practice.    Get Real About Training.    Open Back Up.

Terrorism, transnational crime, cyber security: all problems that are only going to get worse as the world gets more wired and interconnected; all problems that cannot be addressed without a strong intelligence apparatus. The security of the nation is every administrations primary responsibility, which makes resolving to spend political capital on these low-cost, high-return efforts no-brainers.

Continue reading “Journal: WIRED to IC–You're Tired, Get Wired….”