Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 155 – Public Intelligence Blog

FIVE STARS The People We Pay to Look Over Our Shoulders

By Shane Harris

At this very moment analysts at the National Security Agency some 30 miles north of the White House are monitoring countless flashpoints of data — cellphone calls to “hot” numbers, an e-mail message on a suspicious server, an oddly worded tweet — as they carom around the globe like pinballs in cyberspace.

The snippets of information could conceivably lead them to Anwar al-Awlaki, a fugitive cleric in Yemen whose fiery sermons have inspired violent jihadists. Or to the next would-be underwear bomber. Or, much more likely in the needle-in-a-haystack world of cyber detection, it might lead to nothing at all — at least nothing of any consequence in determining Al Qaeda’s next target.

This is the world of modern eavesdropping, or signals intelligence, as its adherents call it, and for many years it operated in the shadows. “The Puzzle Palace,” the 1983 best seller by James Bamford that remains the benchmark study of the N.S.A., first pulled back the curtain to provide a glint of unwanted sunlight on the place. And the years after the Sept. 11 attacks — a period in which the surveillance agencies’ muscular new role would lead to secret wiretapping programs inside the United States, expansive data-mining operations and more — gave rise to public scrutiny that made the place a veritable greenhouse of exposure.

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

2010/02/22

Review: China Safari–On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa

5 Star, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Economics, Information Operations, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Engaging, Earnest, New Insights, a Great Contribution

February 22, 2010

Serge Michel, Michel Beuret, Paolo Woods (Photos)

Of the modest number of books focused on China in Africa, this is one of the two best, and both are unique–if you buy only one, at least read my summary of the other, China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence Whereas this book is direct journalism with wonderful color photos and direct ground-truth stories, China Into Africa is a best in class collection of academic essays.

Sixteen full pages of color photos in the middle of the book were unexpected and a complete delight.

On balance between the two books, this one taught me more and provided insights I could not get elsewhere to include the clear understanding, documented across multiple encounters by the authors, that the Chinese consider any Chinese business area or housing area of, by, and for their Chinese workers, to be sovereign territory of China immune to indigenous inspection or intervention.

Highpoints for me:

+ Africa is undergoing a huge transformation, and in combination, the infusion of Chinese infrastructure with the discovery of new energy fields and the growing need of all for what Africa has, is creating a perfect environment for a wealth explosion, and the US is missing it.

+ US has given up in Africa, in large part because the US Government other than the military does not have the resources, the human capital, the area knowledge, or the innate interest to actually do something strategic. The Chinese, in contrast, are unifying and pacifying Africa with infrastructure and commerce, while gaining direct access to natural resources that they can take possession of at half the market value by controlling the supply chain and no doubt lying about how much they are extracting.

+ Chinese presence in Africa is vertically and horizontally integrated, to include relatively thorough exploitation of what I have named the eight tribes of intelligence (academic, citizen-civil sector, commercial, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental), the Chinese appear to be way ahead of the US and all others in the Information Operations (IO) domain.

Continue reading “Review: China Safari–On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa”

2010/02/22

Review: China into Africa–Trade, Aid, and Influence

4 Star, Country/Regional, Diplomacy, Economics, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

One of Two “Best” on China in Africa

February 22, 2010

Robert I. Rotberg, contributing editor

Of the modest number of books focused on China in Africa, this is one of the two best, and both are unique–if you buy only one, at least read my summary of the other, China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa. Whereas t his book is a best in class collection of academic essays, China Safari is direct journalism with wonderful color photos and direct ground-truth stories.

While this book good easily be five stars in terms of staid academic documentation and reasonable insights, is just does not give me–nor does the other book–a 360 degree view aided by a few maps and charts. This is all print, and while there is a great deal of detail, the over-all synthesis and analysis is not there–each piece stands on its own. Here are my distilled notes.

01 Rotberg China's Quest for Resources, Opportunities, and Influence in Africa
+ Third era in Chinese-African relations, first was in the 600-700 AD period
+ Since 2006 China has displaced Europe and is set to displace the USA within the decade
+ India and Japan are pushing back in Africa, but weakly
+ China is building infrastructure as a means of capturing below-market price direct access to natural resources
+ China's neutral non-interventionist policies have opened doors closed by Western human rights badgering
– Downside is the substandard goods that China is dumping, and sub-price, displacing local economy suppliers
– Downside is Chinese labor brought in, thousands as a time, not hiring or training local labor
– US Government generally “ill-prepared” to monitor or understand China's broad presence in Africa
– Neither the African Union nor any of its regional economic commissions have a China strategy or policy
Continue reading “Review: China into Africa–Trade, Aid, and Influence”

2010/02/222010/02/25

Journal: Commentary on Moonlighting at the CIA

Government, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership-Integrity

In a 1 February 2010 article adapted from the his forthcoming book, ‘Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage,' Eamon Javers wrote:

“In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.”

“The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.”

“But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.”

Commentary Below the Fold

Continue reading “Journal: Commentary on Moonlighting at the CIA”

2010/02/212010/02/21

Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Phenomenal Integration of Ideas–Superb “Once Over”

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February 2010]

Edmund J. Bourne

I have sent INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty to the printer and it is on that foundation that I highly recommend this book for a simple easy to understand overview of the fifteen converging forces that the author lists and then discusses in superbly-crafted very easy to read overviews. He covers:

01 A conscious universe

02 Multidimensional reality

03 Interconnection of all minds

04 Complementarity of science and spirituality

05 Radical empiricism [revalidation of intuition and visioning]

06 Consciousness has a causal influence

07 Natural ethics [I really like this, hugely beneficial for all]

08 Reverence for nature and earth [in my book, diversity rocks]

09 A sense of inclusiveness toward all humanity [diversity again]

Continue reading “Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity”

2010/02/212010/02/21

Review: Willful Neglect–The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Budget Process & Politics, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration)

Final Review: Ground-Level View of Obvious Vulnerabilities and a General Failure to Protect

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February]

Sam Faddis

My own new book is finally at the printer, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty and I am really enjoying getting back into serial reading. I totally respected and agreed with this author's first book, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and I find this ground-level view “from our enemies' eyes” to be quite helpful, accurate, and alarming.

This is not a book the Administration (regardless of which party happens to be in control on any given day) because the Administration is totally out of touch with reality, totally partisan, and largely not interested in the welfare of average Americans because Wall Street money is personal, our tax payments are not–they go to the highest bidder.

Indeed, the decisions that the Administration makes every day not only make our citizens less safe, they cost our earnest honest businesses billions of dollars as imposed costs from government errors of understanding and policy and regulation. See my article in Homeland Security Today on “America's Cyber-Scam,” and separately, my update on the massive looting of Haiti that is about to take place as American contractors rush to swindle everyone, joining the Red Cross in the 50% overhead scam–only in the case of US contractors paying Haitians a dollar a day, it will be more like 80% scam.

What the author has done that no one else has done to date, is actually “walk” the ground across America looking for obvious vulnerabilities that terrorists armed with silencers and willing to die could exploit.

Each chapter covers a different vulnerability, and the value of this book is easily seen in the fact that this is almost “real-time” intelligence on specific vulnerabilities, the author has been “up close and personal” with each one, and the bottom line is clear: The US Government and state and local government have no idea how to protect America internally, we are living on grace, not preparedness (just as CIA offices under official cover overseas are not really operating under cover, just tacit immunity from local liaison which has them all pegged).

Chapter one takes down two military facilities.
Continue reading “Review: Willful Neglect–The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security”

2010/02/212011/10/22

Review: Wiki Government–How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Public Administration, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Almost a Five–Making Wrong Things Righter

February 21, 2010

Beth Simone Noveck

I sat down intending to make this a five, but the two fluff reviews have to be off-set. Robert Ackoff would say this is a spectacular book about making the wrong things righter instead of the right things righter–too many lawyers and focused on improving a patent approval system that probably needs to be eradicated and the buildings and files plowed under with salt. It also lost one star because I was one of the 4,000 that actually participated in the Open Government experiment, where the legalization of marijuana triumphed and every time someone voted for my governance reform idea, a “monitor” from the partisan correctness office came in and voted against it moving it back down to zero. The author is naive to think this initiative is going anywhere without electoral reform that displaces the two-party tyranny and restores the Constitution, the Article 1 independence of an honest Congress, and integrity of the Executive at the political level. [See especially Chapter 21 in my new book that just went to the printer, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty and is free online at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, and my earlier wire-bound book, also free online, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography).

Having said that, I found this book to be spectacularly informative, thoughtful, useful, with extraordinary insights and suggestions that were over-shadowed by the focus on the patent system–suggestions about the-redesign of government, for example. I recommend reading my reviews of SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa and of The Myth of Digital Democracy along with this review, the three books were read together as a set. Below are some quotes and my fly-leaf notes. This book is a foundation stone for righteous change into the future, but only that first stone.

QUOTE (xvi): Done right, it is possible now to achieve greater competence by making good information available for better governance, improve effectiveness by leveraging the available tools to engender new forms of collective action, and strengthen and deepen democracy by creating government by the people, of the people, and *with* the people.

Continue reading “Review: Wiki Government–How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful”