Category: Reform

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Journal: Strategy versus Secrecy

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

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”

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Journal: PA & NYPD Criminalize Twitter

10 Security, 11 Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Real Time, Reform

Elliot Madison Accused Of Using Twitter To Tweet Police Actions At G-20 Protests

Tweeting Without a Permit
Tweeting Without a Permit

NEW YORK — A self-described New York City anarchist has been accused of tweeting the location of police officers to protesters trying to evade them during the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvania State Police arrested Elliot Madison alleging he used Twitter to direct the movement of protesters and inform them about law enforcement actions at last month's summit.

Phi Beta Iota: We are–as usual–NOT making this up.  Coming as it does with repeated rumors of on-going preparations to federalize all state and local police forces “as necessary” and the long-standing concerns about the internment camps for use in the event of “civil unrest,” we have to ask ourselves, can this be for real?  According to the Huffington Post, it most assuredly is.

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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.

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Journal: India, Demography, & the Future

03 India, Legislation, Mobile, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

India’s Demographic Moment

With the right conditions in place — education, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness among them — a young, eager, educated workforce can be the key to prosperity.

by Nandan Nilekani August 27, 2009

Harvard Business Review

When conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s growth to remarkable levels. This theory is known as the “demographic dividend,” a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom. He proposes that when young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country’s population, the national economy is affected in positive ways.

Continue reading “Journal: India, Demography, & the Future”

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Journal: Pork as Usual, John P. Murtha Oinks On

Reform
The Book on Two-Party Tyranny and Bad Government
The Book on Two-Party Tyranny and Bad Government

Washington Post October 8, 2009 Pg. 2

Ex-Staffers Winning Defense Panel Pork, Study Finds

By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer

In the coming year's military spending bill, members of a House panel continue to steer lucrative defense contracts to companies represented by their former staffers, who in turn steer generous campaign donations to those lawmakers, a new analysis has found.

The Center for Public Integrity found that 10 of the 16 members of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations obtained 30 earmarks in the bill worth $103 million for contractors currently or recently employing former staffers who have become lobbyists. The analysis by the Washington watchdog group found that earmarks still often hinge on a web of connections, despite at least three criminal investigations of the practice that became public in the past year. Those probes focus on a handful of defense contractors and a powerful lobbying firm that together won hundreds of millions of dollars in work from the House panel and are closely tied to its chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).

Phi Beta Iota: A Senate staffer explained this to us.  First, staffers are trusted to not testify against the boss.  Second, staffers know the deal is 2% to 5% for every earmark ultimately appropriated.  Earmarks are both a form of reductionism and a form of corruption, both antithetical to the survival of the Republic.

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Journal: Director of National Intelligence Reverses Progress–Time to Rethink Everything

Government, Methods & Process, Reform, Technologies, Tools

IC Meets OSINT
IC Meets OSINT

Shutdown Of Intelligence Community E-mail Network Sparks E-Rebellion

The Atlantic POLITICS

Marc Ambinder

Oct 6 2009

The intelligence community's innovative uGov e-mail domain, one of its earliest efforts at cross-agency collaboration, will be shut down because of security concerns, government officials said.  The decision, announced internally last Friday to the hundreds of analysts who use the system, drew immediate protests from intelligence agency employees and led to anxiety that other experimental collaborative platforms, like the popular Intellipedia website, are also in the target sights of managers.

It follows reports that another popular analytic platform called “Bridge,” which allows analysts with security clearances to collaborate with people outside the government who have relevant expertise but no clearances, is being killed, and indications that funding for another transformational capability, the DoDIIS Trusted Workstation, which allows analysts to look at information at a variety of clearance levels — Secret, Top Secret, Law Enforcement Sensitive– is being curtailed.
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Journal: Lee Hamilton on Congress

Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform
Lee Hamilton
Lee Hamilton

Overview

Is This The Congress We Want? We Can't Wait Much Longer To Fix Congress Lobbying Murkiness Undermines Our Trust in Congress Congress Confuses the Public and Itself Congressional Bickering Who Lobbies for the Rest of Us? It's Time for the Public to Fund Congressional Travel Congress Needs to Invigorate Its Ethics System, Not Weaken It Why Congress Must Learn To Look Ahead Broken Budget Process Congress and Individual Liberties A Balanced View of Congress The Money Chase Tackling the Tough Issues Is Congress out of Touch? Congress and the Pork Barrel

Phi Beta Iota: Lee Hamilton, a Representative for 30+ years, now leads The Center on Congress at Indiana University.  He is unique for being the single voice most responsible for putting an Open Source Agency (OSA) on pages 23 and 413 of the 9-11 Commission Report, something he did on the basis of what he learned from being on the Aspin-Brown Commission and watching the “The Burundi Exercise” that pitted Robert Steele with six open source telephone calls against the entire U.S. Intelligence Community.  Steele won, producing commercial imagery, Russian 1:50 combat charts, a list of the top academic experts; a list of the top journalists; tribal orders of battle including technical, etcetera.  CIA had a cute little map of the region and a regional economic study with flawed assumptions (mirroring).  Each of the above is a separate short discourse, each worthy of every citizen's attention.

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