InfoOps (IO) – Page 52 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/10/102009/10/10

Journal: Strategy versus Secrecy

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats

We pay careful attention to the search terms used by those who visit us, and have noticed a very healthy focus on strategy and on secrecy. The two are incompatible.

Strategy, by its inherent nature, must be holistic, transparent, and sustainable. It demands broad collaboration and the broadest possible information-sharing and sense-making.

Secrecy, by its very nature, is reductionist, completely opaque, and generally not sustainable beyond the moment. It restricts collaboration, excludes key stake-holders with relevant information, and does not share effectively.

Michael Herman's book on Intelligence in Peace and War is the best available review of why intelligence at the strategic level should not be secret.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's book on Secrecy remains one of the best articulations of the hidden costs of secrecy to a Republic.

Continue reading “Journal: Strategy versus Secrecy”

2009/10/092009/10/09

Journal: Defense Research, Science, & Technology

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Commercial Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Military, Reform

Proprietary Black Box Magic Happens Inside Linked to TS/SCI Price List (Only Visible to Idiots) — Proprietary Black Box Expensive Classified Magic Happens Inside

DoD Suppressed Critique of Military Research

New DoD Website Fosters Secret Science

Phi Beta Iota:Two reports today confirm our grave doubts about the viability of U.S. Departemnt of Defense (DoD) research in general, and Science & Technology (S&T) in particular. In combination with the known grid-loock and inherent loss of integrity within defense acquisition, these two reports suggest that the U.S. taxpayer will continue to pay more and more for less and less, while secrecy is used to avoid accountability. It has long troubled us that in classifying deficiencies, DoD assures a lifetime monopoly on “fixes” to the people that created the deficiencies in the first place–they do not know what they do not know! DoD desperately needs a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) able to get a grip on all Human Intelligence (HUMINT) funded by the U.S. taxpayer. Ideal would be an expansion of the Undersecretary of Defense of Intelligence so as to add this as an integrative ICT and HUMINT integration function, while also assuming collaborative oversight of the Inspector General and of Operational Test and Evaluation. See the latest draft of the HUMINT Monograph for more information.

2009/09/252009/10/02

Journal: The Cloud Bubbas (Two Bubbettes) Met on 3 September and You Were Not Invited

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Cloud of Clouds is the new new meme, burying Semantic Web. You can see Vint Cerf in his traditional vest. We've asked for the names of all those attending, perhaps that will come out soon.

In the meantime, we see Google and CISCO-Nokia going head to head, whle Amazon and IBM fritter on the sides, HP brings out SkyRoom, and China creates its own Google killer. What India might be up to is a mystery–if we were in their shoes we'd be putting a Nokia factory in EACH province, and demanding that all computers sold in india be wireless equipped and capable of creating ad hoc neighborhood clouds that can survive the Obama Administration's shutting down of the Internet in the USA.

Of possible interest:

Robert Steele's Briefing on Real Time Information

IBM's White Paper on Creating a Dynamic Infrastructure Through Virtualization

IBM's Short Video New Intelligence Toward a Smarter Planet

IBM's Short Video Dynamic Infrastructure for a Smarter Planet

Phi Beta Iota: We need an MCC equivalent for the whole enchilada from analog data capture to desktop decision-support.

2009/09/072009/09/07

Journal: Markle Foundation Focuses on Lack of Information–We Focus on Lack of Integrity

Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO)

Nation At Risk: Policy Makers Need Better Information to Protect the Country

For all the nation has invested in national security in the last several years, we remain vulnerable to terrorist attack and emerging national security threats because we have not adequately improved our ability to know what we know about these threats.

Phi Beta Iota: The Markle Foundation means well, but like most in the two-party tyranny and its circle of “fellow travelers” this report misses two big points: first, Washington does not lack for information, it lacks for integrity. Second, with integrity, there would not only be plenty of money for both Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) within government, and Public Intelligence outside of government, but we would also recognize, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently noted with commendable integrity: it is our mis-behavior that is the threat. We KNOW what the ten high-level threats to humanity are, LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft helped prioritize them. INTEGRITY. One word. Without it, no amount of information or intelligence will do. Markle, and everyone else, need a strategic analytic model as well as the proven process for doing decision-support–absent that, an appreciation for the essential role that integrity plays, they are as irrelevant or counterproductive as are all courtiers to any corrupt government.

Tip of the Hat: Docuticker from Secrecy News.

2009/08/242009/08/26

Journal: MILNET Flags Sorting It Out: New Tools Wrestle Mountains of Data Into Usable Intelligence

Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools

August 24, 2009

Pg. 11

By Kris Osborn

In 2008, U.S. military forces collected 400,000 hours of airborne surveillance video, up from several thousand hours 10 years ago. So the Pentagon is turning to computers to help save, sort and search it all.

“The proliferation of unmanned systems across the battlefield is not going to lessen in the future. We saw it happen in the first Gulf War. Once commanders have it, there is an insatiable appetite for FMV,” or full-motion video, said Maj. Gen. John Custer III, who commands the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

“You not only need the tools to exploit that, you need storage because commanders don’t only want to see a building now but what it looked like yesterday, six weeks ago and six months ago,” Custer said. “When you have 18 systems up for 18 hours a day, you get into terabytes in a week. We are going to be in large data-storage warehousing for the rest of time.”
Continue reading “Journal: MILNET Flags Sorting It Out: New Tools Wrestle Mountains of Data Into Usable Intelligence”

2009/08/092009/08/09

Journal: Global Information Grid 2.0 and Counting

Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, General Accountability Office, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Policies, Strategy, Threats

In an era when changes to the Earth that used to take 10,000 years now take three;

In an era when all information in all languages all the time is the non-negotiable first step to achieving holistic understanding of the Earth's system of systems as well as all the chaotic sub-systems;

In an era when the Nordics are far ahead of everyone else in thinking about Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2),

it is helpful to have a sense of what the U.S. Department of Defense is going with respect to it's own Global Information Grid (GIG).

Below are a few headlines as well as pointers to a couple of devastatingly critical reviews from the General Accountability Office (GAO).

Phi Beta Iota has just one question: when, if ever, will DoD plan, program, budget, and implement for a world in which 96% of the information DoD needs to exploit is not secret, not in English, and not originating from a DoD device?

After the GAO reports, click on the Frog Left to read what we said to the National Research Council about the Army Communications Architecture in the early 1990's and Frog Right to read about our recommendations for National Information Infrastructure (NII) cyber-security in the mid-1990's.

DoD needs a Chief Knowledge Oficer (CKO)–someone that knows the difference between knowledge management, network management, content capture and exploitation, and the Holy Grail, organizational intelligence.

Continue reading “Journal: Global Information Grid 2.0 and Counting”

2009/07/202009/10/24

Journal: World Bank to Play Sheriff in Recovering Despot Funds

Corruption, Government, InfoOps (IO), Law Enforcement, Stabilization & Reconstruction

With a tip of the hat to Intelligence Online Issue No. 598 (16-29 July 2009), we are delighted to note that the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) is creating a special new investigative unit to focus exclusively on identifying and facilitating the recovering of assets stolen by politicians in the emerging countries, i.e. Africa and Central Asia as well as select countries in South Asia and Latin America.

According to Intelligence Online, the one newsletter that is essential to those following the world of intelligence, the new unit will be partly financed by USD $100 million paid by Siemens on 2 July 2009 to avoid legal proceedings in connection with its payment of briber to Russian officials administering a World Bank contract awared.

Intelligence Online goes on to discuss the United Nations “Stolen Asset Recovery” initiative (STAR), which did not do investigations itself, but provided limited financiing for legal or private investigative probes.

Intelligence Online notes that Nigeria and Kenya had no difficulty finding the money stolen by Sani Abacha and David Arap Moi, but had to go to considerable lengths to force the banks to release the funds. The World Bank's unit is evidently intended to make it easier to obtain and submit legal evidence that will compell banks to release the funds.

As we learned in Africa Unchained (see review), $148 billion is believed to have been stolen by various despots from Africa alone. We speculate that a global Information Operations (IO) campaign to recover that money could be the fastest, cheapest, best means of helping Africa help herself.