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”
Robert Steele, the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, considers Stephen E. Arnold to be the single most professional analyst of emerging information technologies and their social meaning. His “Google Triology” may well be the most significant body of work of practical significance not just to the information industry, but to civil liberties, capitalism, civil society, democracy, digital dictatorship, digital ethics, governance, intellectual property, privacy, and all manner of community, budget, policy, and threat as it is impacted by Google, a supranational predator with out of this world computational mathematics and no commitment at all to public intelligence in the public interest. Below is the cover to his latest offering, with a link to Infonortics UK, the sole source of this e-book that we recommend be printed.
SteveArnold
The link within the book cover includes immediate free access to the table of contents and a sample chapter as well as the author's three-point summary. At the book's home page are also links to his first two works, The Google Legacy and Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator, and a special offer for the Google Trilogy.
Below are the printing instructions we use with this kind of work:
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Color, double-side, laser paper except last two and first pages which should be on 80 cover stock. Wire binding, please use closest possible to avoid overage of wire beyond book's natural thickness.
Josh Habib, far left, a 53-year-old translator for the U.S. Marines, speaks with Afghan villagers and two Marines in the Nawa district of Helmand province.
By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press writer
July 26, 2009 6:00 AM
NAWA, Afghanistan — Josh Habib lay in a dirt field, gasping for air. Two days of hiking with Marines through southern Afghanistan's 115-degree heat had exhausted him. This was not what he signed up for.
Habib is not a Marine. He is a 53-year-old engineer from California who was hired by a contracting company as a military translator. When he applied for the lucrative linguist job, Habib said his recruiter gave no hint that he would join a ground assault in Taliban land. He carried 40 pounds of food, water and gear on his back, and kept pace — barely — with Marines half his age.
U.S. troops say companies that recruit military translators are sending linguists to southern Afghanistan who are unprepared to serve in combat, even as hundreds more are needed to support the growing number of troops.
Some translators are in their 60s and 70s and in poor physical condition, and some don't even speak the right language.
. . . . . . .
At Camp Leatherneck, four U.S.-citizen interpreters spoke with AP but none gave his name for fear of losing his job.
The translators said dozens of linguists quit soon after arriving in Afghanistan in recent weeks. Spangler declined to provide numbers but said “quite a bit” resigned or were fired because they were too old, unfit or couldn't speak Pashto.
Army Sgt. Will Gamez, 26, of Los Angeles, said he recently worked with a linguist who spoke only the Afghan language of Dari, instead of Pashto.
One translator alleged that most of his colleagues cannot speak Pashto, and that some recruits in the U.S. were bypassing the language test administered for Mission Essential by having a skilled Pashto speaker take it over the phone. The company does not require the initial test be taken in person but later gives in-person tests.
Spangler said the military is working its way through dozens of newly arrived interpreters and that the system will weed out the weaker ones by September.
But Gamez said soldiers need translators now, and that some feign sickness to avoid work.
“If he doesn't go out, I can't do my job,” Gamez said. “If locals come up to us, we can't tell what they're saying. They might be warning us about a minefield. They might be warning us about an ambush.”
+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++
Click on the photograph above for the full story online.
How the Pentagon manages to persist in demanding US Citizens eligible for SECRET clearances is the question of the year. In a combat situation, cut-off from the world, a native linguist with a European city ability to speak in English, no clearances, a fit young man until recently unemplpyed–indeed, two of them, to cross check each other at a quarter of the price being paid for overweight elderly white non-hakcers form the USA…the mind simply boggles.
General Al Gray, Commandant of the Marine Corps, nailed in in 1989 when he sought to focus Department of Defense attention on our shortfalls with respect to the Third World, and others nailed it when they pointed out that access to open sources in languages we do not speak was then and remains now the “sucking chest wound” in US intelligence. Perhaps it should not be called intelligence at all, but rather “Dollar Roulette.”
It also troubles us that the Department of Defense has not figured out how to use Telelanguage.com, which could make available, 24/7 thousands of translators able to provide accurate calm translations, including quality control oversight, from their homes or offices worldwide. C4I is supposed to combine communicatios, computing, and intelligence assets in innovative ways. From where we sit, the translation problem is being handled in a 1950's manner and our Marines and Army soliders are at risk because of a lack of imagination and integrity in how this specific program is being managed.
Translation on DemandTranslators without Clearances
Stephen E. Arnold has been the virtual Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the global multinational open source information grid, and remains the “top gun” for seeing the future of non-state civil society information technologies.
PLATINUM LIFETIME AWARD, Mr. Stephen E. Arnold
For his constant demonstration of the utility of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in the understanding of social networks, emerging technologies, and cultural realities. As a world-renowned authority on information and communications, with a deep understanding of the public policy value of open source information, he has made himself available around the world, and had much more influence than most realize. His publication of the book, “The Google Legacy,” is a mere milestone in one of the most distinguished information careers in the world
Frog Left gets you to his online book for sale, really an intense analysis of Google patents, most not visible to normal researchers, entitled Google 2.0: The Calculating Predatory. Frog Right gets you to our review of Arnold contribution, which was also send to four Ambassadors and eight CEOs with the most to gain or lose from understanding the totality of the Google supranational strategy.
Google 2.0: The Calculating PredatorReview of Google 2.0
In 1985 CIA knew all it needed to know to create the all-source analytic workstation. It never happened for all the reasons that continue to incapacitate the DNI today.
There is no other person who has created a national open source intelligence capability, with recognition from the Royal War Academy for doing so; then gone on to rationalize McKinsey knowledge management in the Nordic region, then created the foremost international commercial intelligence practice in InfoSphere AB, and concluded with the creation of Silobreaker, a combination of sources and tools that takes the information industry to a new level. Mats Bjore is the ultimate Long Range Reconnaissance Philosopher-Warrior.