Search: OSINT software

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The search term brings up appropriate results, but the fact of the search gives us an opportunity to provide comment.

1)  Nothing now being used by governments, and certainly not iBase or Palantir, both aging technologies that do not scale and have too many fat-finger handicaps, fulfills the originial requirements documents crafted in the late 1980's.

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

2)  The ONLY programs that have gotten anywhere close are COPERNICUS plus plus, and SILOBREAKER.  However, both of these have been slow to recognize the urgency of integrating–fully integrating–capabilities that address each of the eighteen functionalities.  Below is the list of softwares now in use by US Special Operations Command J-23 Open Source Intelligence Branch along with the STRONG ANGEL TOOZL and a couple of other things.

Memorandum: USSOCOM Software List and STRONG ANGEL TOOZL

See also:

Definitions: M4IS2 (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing & Sense-Making

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Worth a Look: Deep Web Multilingual Federated Search

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Worth a Look: Planetary Skin Data Sharing Initiative

Search: meta-tagging humint

Who’s Who in Librarian Intelligence: Arno Reuser

Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: Mats Bjore

Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Stephen E. Arnold

Journal: Dr. Dr. Dave Warner Shares…

Event Report CORRECTED LINKS: Responding to Real Time Information, Open Systems and the Obama IT Vision [Google-Microsoft Meld]

Review: The Starfish and the Spider–The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Review: Innovation Happens Elsewhere–Open Source as Business Strategy

Journal: Google, the Cloud, Microsoft, & World Brain

Worth a Look: GeoChat (SMS Plotted on Map)

2006 Yekelo (ZA) Continental Early Warning & Information Sharing: A Military Perspective on Deterring & Resolving Complex Emergencies

1998 Arnold (US) New Trends in Automated Intelligence Gathering Software

The global standard for multinational information-sharing and sense-making is in the process of being designed, funded, and distributed.  If you think you have something relevant to that, generally only open source software will be considered, get in touch with any of the individuals above.

Reference: Invisible Empire New World Order DVD + RECAP

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Military, Movies, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, United Nations & NGOs, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Invisible Empire A New World Order Defined Full

2 hours, 14 minutes, 1 second — free online, click on title above

Jason Bermas [creator or Loose Change movie] presents Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined produced by Alex Jones. The film can be ordered here http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/inemnewwoord.html or viewed free online (click on title above).

Summary and See Also Below the Line.

Continue reading “Reference: Invisible Empire New World Order DVD + RECAP”

Reference: Intelligence Support to Small Arms Acquisition–A Brilliant Indictment

10 Security, Analysis, DoD, Methods & Process, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats, Tools
Full Paper Online

Marcus Aurelius:

(1) US consciously changed from standard main battle rifles firing “full military cartridges” (ie., M-14/7.62×51 NATO, M-1 Garand/cal. 30 M-1) to assault rifles (AR-15, M-16, Stoner System) in the 1960s as we attempted to optimize for short-range engagements in the constrained mountainous/jungle environments of Southeast Asia.  At the time, our primary allies were slight of physical stature;

(2) Concurrently, training and engagement doctrine shifted from carefully aimed individual shots to volume of fire (bursts of various numbers of rounds, the “spray and slay” technique) and various “point and shoot” techniques such as “instinctive aiming,” “quick kill,” etc.;

(3) Ammunition followed suit and emphasis in terminal ballistics shifted from accuracy and kinetic energy to volume of fire and bullet yaw/fragmentation; (4) I attach the SAMS paper by MAJ Ehrhart cited in the article.)

Phi Beta Iota: This one paper is a superb indictment of US DoD leadership from the Secretary of Defense, who claims he does not do “maintenance” but is in fact overseeing “business as usual” for Lockheed et all, to the Undersecretaries (Intelligence does not do intelligence support to acquisitions; Acquisitions could care less about inexpensive individual systems; and Policy simply does not have a clue) to the service leaders responsible for training, equipping, and organizing the forces to be sent into battle by the Combatant Commanders.  The Strategic Generalizations developed by the Marine Corps Intelligence Center in 1989 remain valid–and ignored.

Related Media Article:

April 2, 2010

Army Report: GIs Outgunned In Afghanistan

By David Wood

American troops are often outgunned by Afghan insurgents because they lack the precision weapons, deadly rounds, and training needed to kill the enemy in the long-distance firefights common in Afghanistan's rugged terrain, according to an internal Army study.

Politics Daily Full Story Online

Reference: Intelligence Reform Death Notice

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Commissions, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Ethics, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Law Enforcement, Legislation, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Full Document Online

Phi Beta Iota: With a tip of the hat to Marcus Aurelius, this document is provided for information.  On balance it is rich with insights that are not available elsewhere and consequently must be very highly regarded as a baseline for where US intelligence reform (and US intelligence) are today: dead, with a $75 billion a year casket that shows no signs of atrophy.  Below are summary extracts both positive and negative.

Continue reading “Reference: Intelligence Reform Death Notice”

Journal: Military Medicine Up, Military Strategy Not…

05 Civil War, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Strategy
Marcus Aurelius

On Distant Battlefields, Survival Odds Rise Sharply

By ALAN CULLISON

Every war brings medical innovations, as horrific injuries force surgeons to come up with new ways to save lives. During the Civil War, doctors learned better ways to amputate limbs, and in World War I they developed the typhoid vaccine. World War II brought the mass use of penicillin, Korea and Vietnam the development of medical evacuation by helicopter.

Full Story Online

The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical experts say, are still emerging. One legacy is new ways to control bleeding before soldiers lapse into comas or their vital organs shut down. Thanks to new clotting agents, blood products and advanced medical procedures performed closer to the battlefield, wounded American soldiers are now surviving at a greater rate than in any previous war fought by the U.S.

The rising survival rate, now touching 95% for those who live long enough to get medical treatment, is in turn introducing new problems caring for patients with serious and chronic injuries, including multiple amputations and brain damage. The cost of treating such lasting injuries will be borne by the U.S. medical system for decades to come.

Continue reading “Journal: Military Medicine Up, Military Strategy Not…”

Journal: Deep Insights into Failure of US Intelligence

10 Security, Government, Methods & Process

Marcus Aurelius

Dot, Dot, Dot . . .

March 10, 2010

In his new book The Watchers, (Penguin Press, 2010), Shane Harris chronicles what he calls “the rise of America's surveillance state,” a process he's been following since he was a reporter and technology editor at Government Executive from 2001 to 2005.

It's a story with all the elements of a spy thriller: political intrigue, shadowy federal organizations and a compelling cast of characters desperately seeking to prevent the next Sept. 11. At the center is the enigmatic John Poindexter, former national security adviser and architect of the ill-fated Total Information Awareness data collection and analysis effort.

. . . . . . .

What I discovered was that it really was the Beirut attack that shocked the intelligence system in a very similar way to 9/11. You have the Marines in Beirut, ostensibly on this international peacekeeping mission. They're hunkered down at the airport. For various political reasons, they're not allowed to go out very much in public. They are sort of sitting ducks. What happens is in the aftermath of the bombing, the intelligence community finds out there were all these warnings that something bad was about to happen to the Marines at the airport. So you had, in the spring of 1983, more than 100 individual warnings about car bombings fielded by the intelligence community.

Full Interview Online

The Marines were blind, deaf and dumb sitting at the base. And the golden nugget of it all is that NSA intercepted, in the days before the attack, this phone conversation going from a minister in Iran to presumably one of these organizing terrorist groups–directing this group to go and take this spectacular action against the Marines. You add all these up and it looks a lot like 9/11. There's all this information sitting there and it's like, how come nobody's putting it together? And Poindexter is the guy who looks at this and says, “This shouldn't happen and we can take steps to make sure it doesn't happen. There has to be a way to logically approach this problem, systematize the whole process and connect those dots.”

Phi Beta Iota: The US Intelligence Community is badly managed, grotesquely over-funded, and incapable of changing its culture for the simple reason that instead of finding and empowering leaders with new ideas and open minds, we continue to give more money to old leaders, like pouring gasoline on a fire.  We still cannot process 90% of what we collect; we still cannot speak foreign languages; and we still do not play well with others.  The IC is managed by people who know nothing of intelligence–they are essentially staffers who went through the motions of moving money around–and their only real accomplishment is that they have not burned any bridges.  Unfortunately, they have been so busy not burning bridges they have not built anything worthwhile.  The IC is a shell game–move money, move the harem around, repeat the same testimony over and over to Congress again–ultimately the IC is a $75 billion a year tragic farce.

See Also:

Review (Guest): THE WATCHERS–The Rise of America’s Surveillance State

2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

Book: INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH–Final

Journal: United Nations and Information-Sharing

Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Technologies, Threats

UPDATED 2014-01-29 to add the following new links:

2012 Robert Steele: Practical Reflections on UN Intelligence + UN RECAP

References: NATO Transformation Process Documents — and Gaps + Peace from Above RECAP

Search: phd topics on the role of intelligence in peace support operation + Peacekeeping RECAP

United Nations @ Phi Beta Iota

Phi Beta Iota: We are detecting a fascinating evolutionary process within the United Nations “system” which is not a system at all, more like an archipelago with a different cat in charge of each island.  Information-sharing is coming into vogue, but more importantly, the United Nations, perhaps stimulated by the report of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A more secure world: our shared responsibility, appears to finally be realizing that all threats are connected and that poverty is the foundation for all of the other threats thriving–one cannot defeat transnational crime (threat #10) without first addressing poverty (threat #1).

Security Council Calls for Strengthened International, Regional Cooperation to Counter Transnational Organized Crime, in Presidential Statement

With the top United Nations anti-drug official urging concerted global action to “break the vicious circle between insecurity and underdevelopment” being increasingly fuelled by criminal networks, drug smugglers and human traffickers, the Security Council today called on the world body’s Member States to increase international and regional cooperation to tackle transnational organized crime.

The Council invited Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who opened today’s meeting, to consider transnational threats as a factor in conflict prevention strategies, conflict analysis, integrated missions’ assessment and planning and to consider including in his reports, as appropriate, analysis on the role played by those threats in situations on the Council’s agenda.  [Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis Added.]

UN Intelligence = World that Works for All

Global gangs exploit blind spots for trafficking: U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – International criminal gangs and traffickers are exploiting large geographic blind spots where radar, satellite or other surveillance is minimal or nonexistent, the U.N. crime and drugs czar said on Wednesday.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told members of the 15-nation U.N. Security Council that countries must improve their systems of sharing intelligence to reduce these surveillance gaps.

“We need a change in attitude,” Costa told the council. “It is time to regard information sharing as a way of strengthening sovereignty, not surrendering it.”

Continue reading “Journal: United Nations and Information-Sharing”