Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2056 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review?

The Department of Defense began producing the Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997 in response to requests from Congress triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Four of them have been released and the fifth will begin to appear in February or March of 2014.

The Department of State began producing the Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review in 2010. Unlike the Congressionally mandated QDR, this review was undertaken when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State with the intent to push American diplomacy out of its dated approach. Since John Kerry has replaced Hillary Clinton there is speculation that a 2014 QDDR may not be published. This has to be taken seriously, given that it appeared in Foreign Policy magazine.

The Department of Homeland Security also produced the QHSR for the first time in 2010. Like the QDR, this one was ordered by Congress, rather than internally motivated like the QDDR.

The Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review(warning: pdf) was first published in 2001, then again in 2005 and 2009, but I do not find a document for 2013. This is a mystery which I will delve into further, but this should not be read as the IC being behind in some fashion – the National Intelligence Council has produced a Global Trends report for each incoming president since 1979.

Looking at these four areas, Congress sought a systematic review of defense after the end of the Cold War and they made a similar effort to better understand Homeland Security in 2010. The State Department wishes for a better balance between diplomacy and defense and undertook their own quadrennial review. The NIC, now part of the DNI, has been in the habit of producing quadrennial reports for incoming presidents, but this is a work product for them, rather than an oversight and planning related document. They do produce some material like this, but it isn’t queued up for a top level review the way the other three are.

The QDR covers nearly $700 billion in annual expenditures. DHS has a budget of $60 billion, the State Department is about $55 billion, and it’s harder to characterize the intelligence budget but $50 billion is close to the mark.

The Intelligence Community’s Overloaded Life Boat begins to address counter-intelligence concerns at a time when budget cuts are going to lead to the elimination of programs. Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing has laid bare an NSA that is completely out of control, but he’s done us a huge favor in making it obvious we need better oversight. Both Manning and Snowden were young, low level employees who were in a position to walk away with their employer’s most important secrets. Does anyone believe that this hasn’t already happened with other contractors, acting out of a profit motive rather than patriotism?

Congress can begin to do its duty to the American people by formalizing quadrennial review requirements for both the State Department and the seventeen agencies under management by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

2013/12/28

Marcus Aurelius: Tracking US Government Waste

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

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There is great p***ing and moaning about Federal fiscal irresponsibility. IMHO, most of it is misplaced and motivated by a desire to redirect resources from makers to takers. However, the following two articles are pretty good. Object of second article, Sen Tom Coburn's (R-OK) 2013 Wastebook is attached for your convenience. Some of the items showcased are pretty egregious. My personal favorite(?) is the ten or eleven camouflage utility uniforms within the military Services.

How a few efforts to cut federal government spending succeeded — or failed – The Washington Post

Tom Coburn's 2013 Wastebook Highlights Outrageous Federal Spending | Fox News Insider

And Congress decides to screw military retirees and fails to sustain the transit subsidy. What a 535-member battalion of ineffectives!

2013/12/282013/12/28

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Cultural Intelligence

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For reasons that are obvious I love this story. If Ronlyn and I were 25 and working out where to settle, I think I would go for this. It has the potential to become epoch. Like living in the French Quarter as jazz evolved. Or San Francisco in the 60s. Paris in the 20s. And it will prove a double benefit of life affirming policies. It provides wonderful support for the arts, while it also heals the city.

Detroit Is Giving Writers Free Houses in an Effort to Rebuild
ROD BASTANMEHR – AlterNet (U.S.)

Yet another factor in the growing energy transition trend.

Guayule Instead Of Synthetic Rubber
Clean Technica

Waldorf pedagogy holds that children should not become users of passive electronic devices because it blocks crucial development that can only be achieved through movement and creative pro-active play. And there is considerable research supporting this position. Tablets have not been around long enough to reach any conclusions but, I suspect, the Waldorf view is the correc! t one as pertains to tablets.

Tablets a Hit With Kids, But Experts Worry
BREE FOWLER , Technology Writer – The Associated Press

This is the human cost of theologically based social policy. In Saudi Arabia it means women going around in black burkas. In the U.S. it means this. Imagine how you would feel if you had to go through this: Having to maintain a brain dead woman and her non-viable fetus, against her explicit wishes, and the wishes of her husband and family. W! ho will, of course, nonetheless be getting the bill for 20 weeks of high technology care.

Texas Hospital Forbids Husband of Brain-dead, Pregnant Wife to Remove Her From Life Support
SCOTT KAUFMAN – The Raw Story

2013/12/272013/12/28

Yoda: Facebook Dead & Buried

Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency

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Good, this is.

FACEBOOK: the social networking site is ‘dead and buried', replaced by simpler networks, a study says

A study of how older teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried” and is being replaced by simpler social networks such as Twitter and Snapchat, an expert has claimed.

Young people now see the site as “uncool” and keep their profiles live purely to stay in touch with older relations, among whom it remains popular.

Prof Daniel Miller of University College London, an anthropologist who worked on the European Union-funded research, wrote in an article for the academic news website The Conversation: “Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it.

“This year marked the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline of what had been the most pervasive of all social networking sites.

“Young people are turning away in their droves and adopting other social networks instead, while the worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service.

“Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives. Parents have worked out how to use the site and see it as a way for the family to remain connected.

“In response, the young are moving on to cooler things.

“What appears to be the most seminal moment in a young person's decision to leave Facebook was surely that dreaded day your mum sends you a friend request.”

Read full article.

2013/12/27

Chuck Spinney: NSA Can’t Make Sense? I Am Shocked, Simply Shocked…

IO Impotency

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… the quite predictable case of data overload and why the most serious 4th Amendment breach relates to the statistical problem of ‘data culling' algorithms* generating large numbers of “false positives” and thereby wiping out the principle of “probable cause.”

NSA Can’t Make Sense of Masses of Culled Data

Too Much Useless Data, Warns Former NSA Coder

by Jason Ditz, December 26, 2013

William Binney, a former NSA coder behind some of the surveillance program’s algorithms, is warning that the agency’s interest in mass surveillance is coming at a grave cost in efficiency.

While the agency sees value in taking in any data it can get, “just in case,” sorting through a stockpile of unrelated data is soaking up so many resources that what relevant data they might have is getting less focus.

Binney’s comments mirror warnings in some of the Snowden documents, which show the NSA is also concern about their data collection programs far outpacing their ability to process that data.

Indeed, in March some NSA analysts were asking for permission to collect less data with some of the programs, saying that they are collecting a lot of data with “relatively small intelligence value.”

2013/12/272013/12/27

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Cultural Intelligence

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Book: The Social Media Wars: Sunni and Shi'a Identity Conflicts in the Age of Web 2.0 and the Arab Spring

Calamity Calling (Video on Climate Change)

Cost of US Nuclear Program $35B/Year

Facebook reveals human migration: London, Lagos and Istanbul are among the top places to relocate

Metaphone — Why NSA does not need to access individual data

MI6 may have murdered Soviet agents in London in the 1970′s, according to former KGB spy Stanislav Lekaren

NATO Missile Defense & First Strike Capability

NSA: >40 Countries in Relations

Phi Beta Iota: One can only speculate about how much taxpayer money was assigned to each of these over 40 countries — this is a question that Congress should be asking, and it is a question that the elected officials in each of these countries should be asking. NSA appears to have been paying for services that were not declared to the respective host country governments and also were in all likelihood a violation of host country laws.

NSA: Information Overload

NSA: The Panopticon Paradox – When an enemy can be anywhere, the state looks everywhere. So how can it infringe on privacy nowhere?

PBS Covers Singularity

Walter Pincus Without a Clue: Front-Page Rule

Phi Beta Iota: The Front Page Rule was briefed to CIA Career Trainee classes in the 1970's and 1980's and has been an ethics standard since at least the Carter Administration. The other really cool rule, the single best rule of engagement we have ever heard, is this: “use this weapon as a last resort — when you think the alternative of going to jail for life is a good one.”

William Pfaff on US Arrogance

2013/12/272013/12/27

Howard Rheingold: Information Wrangling — Seek, Sense, Share

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

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Bryan Alexander takes off from Jane Hart's personal knowledge management routine to describe his own method of handling information overload, which he calls “information wrangling.” He works through channels and sources daily, reflects, and shares. Alexander details each of these processes in his blog.

Bryan Alexander

My daily info-wrangling routine

Jane Hart describes her daily personal knowledge management (or PKM) routine. It’s an inspiring yet practical workflow for information curation. Or information wrangling, as I like to call it:

I like this framework for various purposes, starting with how it describes a way of handling information overload. It’s also a good model for helping people transition from an analog (print, in-person) set of habits to one including the digital world.

Inspired by this, I’d like to describe my own.

Every day I work through a series of channels and sources (Hart’s “Seek” category), reflect on what I find (“Sense”), then share those reflections (“Share”). I’ll break it down into three aspects, but keep in mind that there’s a lot of back-and-forth across them.

Read full article with links.