Tom Engelhardt: Failure is Success – How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century PLUS Robert Steele on Steps President Obama Could Take…

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Tom Englehardt
Tom Englehardt

Failure Is Success: How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century

“While taxpayer dollars flowed into your coffers, no one considered it a problem that the country lacked 17 overlapping outfits bent on preventing approximately 400,000 deaths by firearms in the same years; nor 17 interlocked agencies dedicated to safety on our roads, where more than 450,000 Americans have died since 9/11”

By

MintPressNews,

What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters.  You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities.  Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for… well, the salacious hell of it.  Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of “spycraft” gains its own name: LOVEINT.

Continue reading “Tom Engelhardt: Failure is Success – How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century PLUS Robert Steele on Steps President Obama Could Take…”

Berto Jongman: Interactive Political Risk Map

Analysis, Geospatial, Worth A Look
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Map Format Options

Note: Political Risk Map and Terrorism Risk Map are hosted on the same website. Use the same login credentials to access both.  Click the links below to access:

PDF Version

Online Version for 2013 Data Only (no registration required)

Login to Online Historical Maps and Analytics (if you already registered)

Value added features of Interactive Risk Map

Exposure Calculator Screen Shot Map Analysis Screen Shot
Exposure Calculator allows clients to measure their financial exposures against country risk. Map Analysis allows clients to measure countries against each other over time.

Click here for web page to register for access to historical maps and supporting analytics.

Patrick Meier: Twitter Dashboard & Media Analysis for Crisis Response

Analysis, Civil Society, CrisisWatch reports, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Geospatial, IO Deeds of Peace, P2P / Panarchy, Peace Intelligence
Patrick Meier

CrisisTracker: Collaborative Social Media Analysis For Disaster Response

I just had the pleasure of speaking with my new colleague Jakob Rogstadius from Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-TTI). Jakob is working on CrisisTracker, a very interesting platform designed to facilitate collaborative social media analysis for disaster response. The rationale for CrisisTracker is the same one behind Ushahidi's SwiftRiver project and could be hugely helpful for crisis mapping projects carried out by the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF).

Read post see screen shots.

Towards a Twitter Dashboard for the Humanitarian Cluster System

One of the principal Research and Development (R&D) projects I'm spearheading with colleagues at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) has been getting a great response from several key contacts at the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In fact, their input has been instrumental in laying the foundations for our early R&D efforts. I therefore highlighted the initiative during my recent talk at the UN's ECOSOC panel in New York, which was moderated by OCHA Under-Secretary General Valerie Amos. The response there was also very positive. So what's the idea? To develop the foundations for a Twitter Dashboard for the Humanitarian Cluster System.

Read post see screen shots.

Dolphin: Fukushima Disaster Was Man-Made Before and After — Collusion and Corruption Across Government and Industry and Media…

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Analysis, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Media
YARC YARC

Fukushima Disaster Was Man-Made, Investigation Finds

The Fukushima nuclear disaster was the result of “man-made” failures before and after last year’s earthquake, according to a report from an independent parliamentary investigation.

The breakdowns involved regulators working with the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. to avoid implementing safety measures as well as a government lacking commitment to protect the public, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission said in the report.

The March 11 accident, which set off a wave of reactor safety investigations around the world, “cannot be regarded as a natural disaster,” the commission’s chairman, Tokyo University professor emeritus Kiyoshi Kurokawa, wrote in the report released yesterday in Tokyo. It “could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.”

The report dealt the harshest critique yet to Tokyo Electric (9501) and the government. The findings couldn’t rule out the possibility that the magnitude-9 earthquake damaged the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 1 reactor and safety equipment. This is a departure from other reports that concluded the reactors withstood the earthquake, only to be disabled when the ensuing tsunami slammed into the plant.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Dolphin: Fukushima Disaster Was Man-Made Before and After — Collusion and Corruption Across Government and Industry and Media…”

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

Analysis, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process
Dr. Stephen Marrin

Stephen Marrin Post-revision draft18 July 2011. Original draft submitted to Intelligence and National Security on 4 February 2011. Accepted for publication on 24 May 2011 pending minor revision.

Evaluating the Quality of Intelligence Analysis: By What (Mis) Measure?<

Dr. Stephen Marrin is a Lecturer in the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University in London. He previously served as an analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency and US Government Accountability Office. Dr. Marrin has written about many different aspects of intelligence analysis, including new analyst training at CIA‘s Sherman Kent School, the similarities and differences between intelligence analysis and medical diagnosis, and the professionalization of intelligence analysis. In 2004 the National Journal profiled him as one of the ten leading US experts on intelligence reform.

Abstract: Each of the criteria most frequently used to evaluate the quality of intelligence analysis has limitations and problems. When accuracy and surprise are employed as absolute standards, their use reflects unrealistic expectations of perfection and omniscience. Scholars have adjusted by exploring the use of a relative standard consisting of the ratio of success to failure, most frequently illustrated using the batting average analogy from baseball.Unfortunately even this relative standard is flawed in that there is no way to determine either what the batting average is or should be. Finally, a standard based on the decision makers’  perspective is sometimes used to evaluate the analytic product’s relevance and utility. But this metric, too, has significant limitations. In the end, there is no consensus as to which is the best criteria to use in evaluating analytic quality, reflecting the lack of consensus as to what the actual purpose of intelligence analysis is or should be.

Evaluating the Quality of Intelligence Analysis: By What (Mis) Measure?

Evaluating the quality of intelligence analysis is not a simple matter. Frequently quality is defined not by its presence but rather by its absence. When what are popularly known as intelligence failures occur, sometimes attention focuses on flaws in intelligence analysis as a contributing factor to that failure.

Read full paper online.

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

David Isenberg: Revolution at State? Or Lipstick on the Pig?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Technologies, Threats
David Isenberg

Revolution @State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

Executive summary

The US State Department has become the world’s leading user of ediplomacy. Ediplomacy now employs over 150 full-time personnel working in 25 different ediplomacy nodes at Headquarters. More than 900 people use it at US missions abroad.

Ediplomacy is now used across eight different program areas at State: Knowledge Management, Public Diplomacy and Internet Freedom dominate in terms of staffing and resources. However, it is also being used for Information Management, Consular, Disaster Response, harnessing External Resources and Policy Planning.

In some areas ediplomacy is changing the way State does business. In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms. In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.

The slow pace of adaptation to ediplomacy by many foreign ministries suggests there is a degree of uncertainty over what ediplomacy is all about, what it can do and how pervasive its influence is going to be. This report – the result of a four-month research project in Washington DC – should help provide those answers.

2012-04-03 Hanson_Revolution-at-State (PDF 34 pages)

Robert Steele

ROBERT STEELE:  Fergus Hanson of Australia has done a truly superb job of describing the considerable efforts within the Department of State to achieve some semblance of electronic coherence and capacity.  What he misses–and this does not reduce the value of his effort in the slightest–is the complete absence of strategy or substance within State, or legitimacy in the eyes of those being addressed.  If the Department of State were to demand the pre-approved Open Source Agency for the South-Central Campus, and get serious about being the lead agency for public intelligence in the public interest, ediplomacy could become something more than lipstick on the pig.   The money is available.  What is lacking right now is intelligence with integrity in support of global Whole of Government strategy, operations, tactics, and technical advancement (i.e. Open Source Everything).

See Also:

2012 THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the Twenty-first Century

Review (Guest): No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

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

Robert Steele: Citizen in Search of Integrity (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Robert Steele: Itemization of Information Pathologies