Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2306 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

0Shares

The United States Seized Confidential Mail Records Of European Parliament

Privacy – Christian Engström: I can’t say I’m surprised – but we’ve got the United States and its security bureaucrats digging through our e-mail in the European Parliament. Mashable reveals that the United States has demanded information from Google about the communications of two Wikileaks activists. One of them is the Icelander Smári McCarthy (pictured).

These events catch our interest here in Brussels, here at the Pirate Party office in the European Parliament. We know Smári, and we have contacted him as a consultant to produce a report on Iceland as an “information paradise” and a conceivable centre for cloud computing (www.islandsofresilience.eu).

Continue reading “Rickard Falgvinge: USA / NSA Raiding Emails of European Parliament”

2013/06/25

SchwartzReport: Summary of US Decline, and Great News on Solar Energy

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

0Shares

I think this analysis and the concept of framing it in a model called the Roosevelt Republic is very insightful.

Decline and Fall: How American Society Unravelled
GEORGE PACKER – The Guardian (U.K.)

Here is an exciting new development where, once again, I couldn't help but wonder, as I read it: what else could we have achieved by now if we spent money differently. Journal Reference: Jakob G. Woller, Jonas K. Hannestad, Bo Albinsson. Self-Assembled Nanoscale DNA–Porphyrin Complex for Artificial Light Harvesting. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2013; 135 (7): 2759 DOI: 10.1021/ja311828v

DNA Constructs Antenna for Solar Energy
Science Daily

2013/06/252013/06/25

NIGHTWATCH: Taliban Spanks Karzai and CIA

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards

0Shares

Afghanistan: During this Watch, news reporters and other sources in Kabul reported a series of explosions and gunfire in the center of the city, near the presidential palace and the minister of defense building. Witnesses said the presidential palace was under attack.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Zahir said he could not locate the attack, but confirmed that an attack was in progress early on the morning of 25 June, local time.

A Taliban spokesman said the attack targeted the Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Defense and the CIA headquarters.

Comment: This attack might be Taliban retaliation for President Karzai's refusal to join talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. It is not so much a show of force as an exposure of vulnerability. This is a sensational security breach in the most heavily fortified part of Kabul.

Latest reporting indicates only the four attackers were killed, but the outer perimeter of a US facility was breached.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Taliban Spanks Karzai and CIA”

2013/06/242013/06/24

Berto Jongman: How geospatial analytics is helping hunt the LRA and al-Shabaab

Advanced Cyber/IO

0Shares

How geospatial analytics is helping hunt the LRA and al-Shabaab

Liat Clark

Wired UK, 24 June 2013

In May 2012 Caesar Acellam, a commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and military strategist for the extremist group's leader Joseph Kony, was captured by the Ugandan army. The act appeared to be a coup for local forces that had for nearly three decades — along with multiple regional governments and the 100 US special forces soldiers sent in 2012 — failed to thwart the militant group's leader, a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity including the abduction of tens of thousands of children.

The capture of one of his top-ranking commanders was made possible, in part, because local forces suddenly knew where to look. Kony's men could not hide from a constellation of five ever-watchful satellites put into orbit by satellite imagery and geospatial analytics firm DigitalGlobe.

Read full article with graphics.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: How geospatial analytics is helping hunt the LRA and al-Shabaab”

2013/06/242013/06/24

Neal Rauhauser: Curator Skill Sheet — Future of Public Intelligence from the Bottom Up

Crowd-Sourcing, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Transparency

0Shares

Compiled this from the source document:

Curator Types
• Aggregator
• Distiller
• Elevator
• Masher
• Chronologist

Curator Skills
• Sense-making: the ability to determine significance
• Social intelligence: the ability to connect with others in a deep way
• Adaptive thinking: the ability to come up with novel solutions
• Cross-cultural competency: the ability to operate in new contexts
• Computational thinking: ability to think abstractly and make data-driven decisions
• New media literacy: the ability to assess new media critically and use itappropriately
• Transdisciplinarity: ability to understand concepts across a range of disciplines
• Design mindset: the ability to understand how the physical environment impactsthinking and make conscious choices in using it
• Cognitive load management: the ability to filter information
• Virtual collaboration: the ability to be a productive part of a virtual team

Curator Methods
• Optimizes
• Edits
• Formats
• Selects
• Excerpts
• Writes
• Classifies
• Links
• Personalizes
• Vets
• Credits
• Filters
• Taps
• Suggests
• Searches
• Scouts
• Hacks Filters & Searches
• Is Transparent
• Recommends
• Crowdsources

Based on: Robin Good: Attention Doesn’t Scale – the Role of Content Curation in Membership Associations

2013/06/242013/07/06

John Frankenstein: Interpreting the “China Dream”

02 China, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

0Shares

The “China Dream” is a slogan that can be interpreted at multiple levels. Here is one pretty good analysis:

What does Xi Jinping's China Dream mean? (BBC, 5 June 2013)

In my writing and lecturing I like to say that the Chinese leadership is trying to answer “4 basic questions”–

1. How to rule a large country with a large population from a single place

2. How to make China great again

3. If China is to become great again, how to transform the country and

4. How to deal with the outside world.

My short answers:

Continue reading “John Frankenstein: Interpreting the “China Dream””

2013/06/242013/06/24

Mini-Me: NSA Routinely Monitored Barack Obama, John McCain, and Other Members

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Idiocy, Military

0Shares

Huh?

ORIGINAL NSA WHISTLEBLOWER: I Saw The Order To Wiretap Barack Obama In 2004

Michael Kelley

Business Insider, 22 June 2013

Russ Tice worked as an offensive National Security Agency (NSA) agent from 2002 to 2005, before becoming a source for this Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article exposing NSA domestic spying.

This week he appeared on the Boiling Frogs Show and detailed how he had his hands “in the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts” during his 20 years as a U.S. intelligence analyst.

Tice claimed that he held NSA wiretap orders targeting numerous members of the U.S. government, including one for a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

“In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It's a big White House in Washington D.C. That's who the NSA went after. That's the President of the United States now.”

Tice added that he also saw orders to spy on Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: NSA Routinely Monitored Barack Obama, John McCain, and Other Members”