Intelligence (Commercial) – Page 4 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/05/012012/05/01

Review: Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Priorities, Public Administration

cover open source intelligence — Amazon Page

Anthony Olcott

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Insider-Outsider Unique Offering, March 24, 2012

This is my final review. If you are interested in what the US Intelligence Community does NOT know about open source intelligence and the global network of sources in 183 languages, this is without question the only book available in English, and a six star rating is earned by virtue of its uniqueness. This is NOT a book that will teach you anything about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

The author, an academic rather than a CIA body, has done a phenomenal job of integrating multiple literatures in studying the history and culture of the CIA's open source endeavors as well as its overall culture, and in his conclusion, offers up sound ideas that need to be implemented if we ever get a national leadership that is interested in intelligence with integrity.

I certainly recommend that this book be read along with Hamilton Bean's No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International).

Dr. Olcott has done a tremendous service to all who care about the future of the craft of intelligence (decision-support), and I have been so impressed with this book that I reworked my chapter for Routledge at the last minute to ensure this book's inclusion in the bibliography and credit to the author on two points within the chapter. A “must read” for anyone interested in bureaucracy, public administration, intelligence, information pathologies, obstacles to innovation, and so on.

I made ten pages of notes. Below I offer a distilled summary.

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2011/10/312011/10/31

Review (UK): Inteligencia teórica [Theory of Intelligence]

5 Star, Foreign Language Books, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

gustavo cover theoria — Amazon Page (UK)

Gustavo DIAZ Matey

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Strong Spanish-Language Text, 31 Oct 2011

I know the author personally, have followed his work over many years, and consider him to be one of the top authorities on intelligence writing in the Spanish language. I recently worked with him in Spain on an initiative he has been developing, to help the Spanish government and Spanish commerce make better use of open sources of intelligence while also refining their methods in relation to data integrity, product integrity, and system or behavioral integrity.

Although I am not familiar with all the publications in Spanish on intelligence, people I trust tell me that this is one of the top books in Spanish. I do not look for it to be translated soon, but would certainly recommend to any publishing house that they consider doing so, as we are all [except the Western governments] moving toward M4IS2 hybrid eight tribe governance, and this is something the author is helping to explain to all governments and business and academic and non-governmental communities that work in the Spanish languages.

M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making

Eight Tribes: Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit

Rather than list specific books I also recommend here, I want to point readers to my full list of most intelligence books that I have reviewed for Amazon, just search for intelligence (most and get right to it with links to the Amazon pages for each book.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2011/10/312011/10/31

Review (UK): Los servicios de inteligencia ante el siglo XXI [Intelligence Services in the 21st Century]

5 Star, Foreign Language Books, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

Gustavo DIAZ Matey

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely important Spanish-language future-relevant book on intelligence, 31 Oct 2011

M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making

Eight Tribes: Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit

2011/07/282011/08/01

Review: Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Terrorism & Jihad

cover counterterrorism and OSINT — Amazon Page

Uffe Kock Wiil (ed)

5.0 out of 5 stars , Innovative, Technical, Leverages Open Sources to the Fullest July 27, 2011

Springer needs to make it clear to Amazon that the book ships from a US-based warehouse. I have urged the lead editor and conference organizer to ask Springer to correct the error. The book is available within the US and should be delivered within the week once Springer corrects the way the book has been registered on Amazon. I anticipate that a paperback version will be offered at a more affordable price for individuals–this is the library or institutional “trade” price.

I am very glad to see the publisher make use of Look Inside the Book, and encourage all interested parties to use that feature and study the table of contents. I have to articulate my profound respect for the conference organizer and senior book editor and for those contributing to this book, all of whom I met at the conference for which this content was created.

I have never seen a better collection of scientific and mathematical approaches to leveraging open sources of information to identify precursors and patterns of terrorism. This is an original book, and the first major effort of the new counterterrorism center at the University of Southern Denmark.

Including my alternative perspective, as one other senior participant put it, “makes our job harder.” One reason I particularly like Nordic professionals is because of their integrity. There is a great deal of intelligence and total integrity in this book; it is an honor for me to have been included. I am not competent in the way the other authors are, and my regard for their pioneering is unlimited.

Also just published, very US centric but a really original study, is No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International). I have provided a lengthy review at the Amazon page for that book.

2011/07/082011/07/08

Review: Global Public Policy – Governing Without Government?

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Environment (Solutions), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Wolfgang Reinicke

Pioneering Work, Missing Some Pieces,July 7, 2011

This is a pioneering work, easily a decade ahead of other world-class efforts, my favorite being that of (then) World Bank Vice President for Europe, J. F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has been largely over-looked, but should gain additional importance, along with the author's additional book, Critical Choices. The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, now that George Soros is sponsoring the Central European University (CEU), and within that university, the author Wolfgang Reinicke has been appointed the inaugural dean of CEU's School of Public Policy and International Affairs. In the context of the essay by George Soros, the first 57 pages of The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies, and the now hardened disenchantment with the nation-state system for being ignorant, biased, and non-agile (these and other deficiencies are marvelously articulated by Professor Philip Allot of Cambridge in The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State, one can surmise that Dean Peinicke will seek to focus on integrationist endeavors that demand transparency and accountability for multiple stakeholders in return for stability and mutual gain.

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2011/06/27

Review (Guest): Re-Creating the Corporation – A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Russell Ackoff

5.0 out of 5 stars “There are no simple solutions to complex problems”., August 21, 2000

ByTurgay BUGDACIGIL (Istanbul, Turkey) – See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

“This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises”. Russel L. Ackoff writes, “therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them” (p.5).

Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:

(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.

(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.

(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.

(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.

(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.

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2011/03/132011/03/13

Review: The Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook–Guide for the Serious Searcher

6 Star Top 10%, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public)

Ran Hock

6 Stars–The ONE Essential Reference

March 13, 2011

I've known Ran Hock for close to twenty years, and now that Mary Ellen Bates (MEB) and Reva Basch are retired (see their last books below), Ran is more or less the last man standing in the independent information brokerage domain, at least that I know. Arno Reuser, the genius librarian and top Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) pioneer in Europe still tells me that just listening to Ran Hock once a year (he was always the pre-conference to my conference) made him appear to be the most intellegent searcher in his organization for another year…Arno was being modest, he is his own pioneer, but the point is important. Ran Hock remains the one person I would consider essential for training a cadre to make proper use of the Internet.

Continue reading “Review: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook–Guide for the Serious Searcher”