Category: Tools

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Journal: Haiti Public Intelligence Emergent

08 Wild Cards, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Tools

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Google Maps updates with new Haiti pics: Hours-old satellite images show destruction

Google has released a new KML overlay — tech speak for map layer — that includes fresh images of Port-au-Prince.

According to GeoEye , the satellite imagery company that provided the photos, they were taken at 10:30 a.m. yesterday from a satellite 423 miles up.

By toggling the new image layer on and off, it’s easy to compare what the city looked like before the earthquake with the way it looks now.

Aside from the obvious destruction, one of the most striking features of the new images is the large number of presumably homeless people in the streets of the ruined neighborhoods.

Click here to see the new images in Google Maps.

Phi Beta Iota: Finally, but kudos never-the-less.  This should always be the first thing done, perhaps with a global arrangement that has regional cost-sharing in place and can use military air breathers where commercial are not immediately available, but respecting Google's software and end-user delivery offering.  There is still the matter of getting to shared Spacial Reference Systems (SRS).  This could and should be used to “plot” Twitter messages that identify need, and in the back office, matching RapidSMS messages that can be aggregated to fund need resolution.

Where Are Haiti Earthquake Relief Funds Going?

Millions in donations have been raised since the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday, but where is the money going?

Like Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti which is urging people to text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to the cause — which has raised more than $2 million so far — many other relief organizations have used mobile messaging to quickly gather funds.

Phi Beta Iota: What is most interesting about this is the fact that fund-raising (financial incentive for the organizers that take a 5% to 50% “cut) is very well developed and moving money, while the other end (requirements definition, logistics coordination, and “by household” delivery” is NOT developed at all.  This is a good start toward the Global to Local Range of Needs Table, when that is developed, this will “flip” in that people will give for SPECIFIC itemized needs, not as a leap of faith in intermediaries that generally do NOT deliver full value.

What is LACKING is a single trusted Multinational Decision Support Center with both regional and global non-profit “cachet” as well as two-way reachback into all eight tribes of all nations, that can be the single point orchestrating the receipt and integration of all information in all languages in near-real-time, and the trusted point for validating both needs and the resolution of needs through the application of fundss.

See Also:

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Worth A Look: MobileIron C4I in the Cloud

Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools

Company Home Page

Network World Names MobileIron a Top 10 Start-up to Watch (Company Press Release)

MobileIron's Innovative Solution for Smartphone Management Drives Selection

Smartphone usage in the enterprise continues to grow rapidly. Forrester Research recently released data showing that 78 percent of information workers across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. either already use or would like to use smartphones to do work. However, smartphones introduce security, cost, and usability challenges that traditional mobile device management strategies cannot address. MobileIron's patent-pending Virtual Smartphone Platform moves smartphone data to the enterprise cloud and gives IT and users unprecedented, real-time intelligence and control while saving 10-20 percent off wireless bills and delivering a compelling new mobile experience.

Peace Jumper Peripheral

Phi Beta Iota: This leads to a press release, but we like it.  We envision the Army Civil Affairs Brigade as the hub for a global network of Peace Jumpers, each armed with a SmartPhone that has reach-back capabilities to a Multinational Decision Support Center and a global grid of 24/7 on call interpreter-translators skilled in 183 languages and all sitting in front of an Internet terminal.

In combination with existing eyeglasses as well as embedded projection capabilities, we see no reason why we cannot enable Smart Multinational Multifunctional Operations within the year.

Haiti should be an information operation, not a physical cluster-dump or financial sink-hole….in our humble opinion.

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Journal: Haiti–Twitter Rocks

03 Environmental Degradation, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Tools

Phi Beta Iota: Now imagine a global public fully aware of the value of Twitter photos with geospatial attributes, and a multinational decision support team able to receive and plot all such contributions….  As long as “research” is controlled by secret and ultra-far out organizations like DARPA and IARPA this stuff is not going to be applied practically.   Civil Affairs Brigade (CAB) and its Joint Civil Information Management (JCIM), combined with a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN), a Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Information Network, and a Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC) would go a long way toward getting an immediate grip on all this, in detail, and then creating a Haiti Needs Table at the household level that could be triaged out (see Graphic: Global Range of Nano-Needs for the idea).

Highlights

Major quake hits Haiti; many casualties expected

Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told U.S. colleagues before phone service failed that “there must be thousands of people dead,” according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.

With phones down, some of the only communication came from social media such as Twitter. Richard Morse, a well-known musician who manages the famed Olafson Hotel, kept up a stream of dispatches on the aftershocks and damage reports.

Haiti earthquake — what we're hearing

CNN is monitoring tweets and other messages from people in Haiti and reports from those who said they have been in touch with friends and family. CNN has not been able to able to verify this material.

“If anyone in Haiti is reading this, please go out and help in the streets, it's very ug;y out there if you haven't seen it #haiti” –From Twitter user fredodupoux in Haiti at 8:04 p.m. ET

“Tipap made it home from Carrefour – saw many dead bodies and injured along the way – said most buidings w/more than one story are down” — From Twitter user troylivesay in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, at 8:22 p.m. ET


Fears of major catastrophe as 7.0 quake rocks Haiti

AFP/Twitter – This image obtained from Twitter purportedly shows Haitians standing amid rubble on January 12 in Port-au-Prince. …

A local doctor told an AFP reporter in the city that hundreds of people are feared dead.

A local UN employee said the earthquake had destroyed the headquarters of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country.

Seventy percent of Haiti's population lives on less than two dollars per day and half of its 8.5 million people are unemployed.

According to official figures, food insecurity already affects more than a quarter of Haiti's population, some 1.9 million people, with women and children the worst affected.

Twitter Has First Pictures Of Haiti Earthquake

News is still coming in from Haiti even thought night as fallen. Shortly after the quake, our first look at the devastation was given to us via social media websites like Twitter and Facebook.

1st Look At Devastation In Haiti Quake

Tue Jan 12, 10:51AM PT – CBS 2 / KCAL 9 Los Angeles 0:54 | 33138 views

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Reference: Department of State Language Gaps

02 Diplomacy, General Accountability Office, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Tools
GAO on State Language Gaps
GAO on State Language Gaps

Phi Beta Iota: The  Department of State (State), which should be the primary interface between the Republic, it's policy, acquisition, and operations communities, and the rest of the world, has fewer diplomats than the Department of Defense (DoD) has military musicians; and continues to suffer persistent staffing and foreign language gaps that “compromise diplomatic readiness” according to the General Accountability Office (GAO).

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

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Searches, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
COIN20 Trip Report
Paradise Found

The future of OSINT is M4IS2.

The future of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is Multinational, Multifunctional, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing & Sense-Making (M4IS2).

The following, subject to the approval of Executive and Congressional leadership, are suggested hueristics (rules of thumb):

Rule 1: All Open Source Information (OSIF) goes directly to the high side (multinational top secret) the instant it is received at any level by any civilian or military element responsive to global OSINT grid.  This includes all of the contextual agency and mission specific information from the civilian elements previously stove-piped or disgarded, not only within the US, but ultimately within all 90+ participating nations.

Rule 2: In return for Rule 1, the US IC agrees that the Department of State (and within DoD, Civil Affairs) is the proponent outside the wire, and the sharing of all OSIF originating outside the US IC is at the discretion of State/Civil Affairs without secret world caveat or constraint.  OSIF collected by US IC elements is NOT included in this warrant.

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Worth a Look: Google Does Data Not Thinking

Methods & Process, Tools, Worth A Look

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Finding the laws that govern us

11/17/2009 09:05:00 AM
Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

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