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Roadmap for War on Iraq and the New American Empire brought to by:

Elliott Abrams , Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney , Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes , Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld , Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

xyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzy

This morning all the news channels are throwing around the term "shock and awe" when they talk about the first missile strike carried out against Iraq. What exactly is that? Well, I did a little researching on the net and I found a site hosting the text of a small book written by Harlan Ullman and James Wade called Shock And Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. It appears this was written as kind of a military playbook or "intellectual construct", written back in 1996. At the time of it's writing, this handbook had to undergo testing at something called the MRC (Military Relations Committee?) and the "Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997". Finally it had to be proven against the Operations Other Than War doctrine and training platforms. Now, I'm not certain what these terms mean, but I'm wondering if this manual is the script for the style of tactics we are now seeing Iraq. If so, the timeline suggests to me that as soon as the first military action in Iraq was over, we started planning the next one... Cross-post from my blog at www.kellytadams.com

Here is the description of the ABL system from the FY2002 defense budget (the applicable 2004 budget is not out yet). ABL is part of Missle Defense Agency's Boost Phase Segment.

AIR-BASED BOOST
The Airborne Laser (ABL) Block 2008 is an existing project line that will design, build and test an air-based laser weapon system to acquire, track and kill ballistic missiles in their boost phase. This weapon system integrates three major subsystems (Laser, Beam Control and Battle Management, Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (BM/C4I)) into a modified commercial Boeing 747-400F aircraft. It also includes ABL-specific ground support equipment. The ABL program definition and risk reduction contract was awarded to the Boeing/TRW/Lockheed-Martin team in November 1996, to design, fabricate, integrate, and test an ABL aircraft with a laser device providing approximately half the projected power of the production version. This phase culminates in lethality (missile shoot-down) demonstrations against boosting ballistic missile threat-representative targets in CY 2003. Two full power aircraft, one prototype and one production, are to be delivered by FY 2009 as part of an initial operational capability (two full power ABL plus one half power ABL). Procurement of the remaining full power aircraft will be completed by FY 2011.

Jesus H. Christ, you're on the Internet. Why don't you looks this shit up:

• Whitehouse
• Defense Link
• a comment I made with some detail

President George W. Bush today released the details of his 2003 Department of Defense budget proposal to fight the war against terrorism, provide for homeland defense and accelerate changes to transform the U.S. military. To address these needs, the President's budget proposes $369 billion for DoD plus $10 billion, if needed, to fight the war on terrorism - for a total of $379 billion.

A lot of this money is salary and benefits for our volunteer military: about $200 billion (see my comment). You could call that warmongering I guess.

You should feel free to whine, but at least try to use the occasional fact. Fuckwit.

Partial Quote Below

At issue among reporters was the potential of the federal government to access the everyday transactions of ordinary citizens -- passport, visa and drivers license applications, airline ticket or rental car reservations, medical data, and even credit and debit card purchases, for instance.

Again, Aldridge defended the project. He said data put into the system would be subject to the same Privacy Act restrictions that govern law enforcement and government actions today. Officials would not be scrutinizing everyday transactions by ordinary citizens. The system would only look closely at transactions or combinations of transactions that officials know are possible indicators of terrorist actions.

For instance, if the system sees evidence of an individual buying large amounts of chemicals that can be used to make explosives then renting a van near a major metropolitan area, the system might throw up a red flag. To further investigate the individual, law enforcement agents would have to go through the same legal proceedings that are necessary today to protect individual rights, Aldridge explained.

He stressed this system is a tool for law enforcement agencies that is merely being studied by the Defense Department, not a way for the government to spy on the American public.

"It is absurd to think that DARPA is somehow trying to become another police agency," he said.

Read the interview with U.S. Secretary of Defence
Donald ("Dr.) Rumsfeld here.

Look for the question about "illegally arming Iraq".

Cheers,
Woot

Genuinely I think you can say that the FARC is a terrorist organization because they have been responsible for military attacks on civilian targets. ... And you might even imply, by extension, that the US government is a terrorist organization since they back the columbian government.

"By extension", heck. The US Government
has
repeatedly
bombed
civilian
targets.

I'm not arguing whether or not the attacks linked above were justified, simply that they were in fact civilian targets. If that's your only criterion, your analysis applies to the US government as much as anyone. No need to split hairs after all.

Genuinely I think you can say that the FARC is a terrorist organization because they have been responsible for military attacks on civilian targets. ... And you might even imply, by extension, that the US government is a terrorist organization since they back the columbian government.

"By extension", heck. The US Government
has
repeatedly
bombed
civilian
targets.

I'm not arguing whether or not the attacks linked above were justified, simply that they were in fact civilian targets. If that's your only criterion, your analysis applies to the US government as much as anyone. No need to split hairs after all.

The common thread to all of this is Donald Rumsfeld.

1. under nixon/ford/reagan: war on drugs
2. under bush: war or terra, tied in with WOD
3. soon under bush: war on pirates, ie nuke s-e asia, full spectrum dominance of the networks, via eschelon, carnivour, etc, a grab for global jurisdiction...

and the whole time, sitting there right behind the wings is the perhaps the most evil man in the world, Donald Rumsfeld. This man who was described by Kissinger as a despot was Secretary for Defence under Nixon, Ford, Regan (by proxy) and Bush - think bombing of cambodia, think nicuragua, think the rise of suharto in indonesia and the US embassy supplied hit lists. As his official CV makes clear, he was CEO of some of the world's most evil companies and full time spook.

His plan is so simple, yet so evil. Divide the world into the haves and have nots. kill the have nots or use them as slave labour, don't bother making death camps in kolma when you can have prison labour labelling underwear.

the future for the haves is different. they must pay and pay for the privelidge of having.

the have's are really just the cream of the have nots. they, by benefit of luck, some innate special skills or knowledge can seem like they have, even though their main daily activity is the generation of other people's wealth.

there is of course the final elite group, the core cabal, illuminati, star chamber whatever. they have and like the man says, them that have get more. rupert, donny, bill (both of them), the georges charleses etc etc, and all those born to rule date rapists you hated at high school and university. these guys have robbed the whole world blind. they have murdered, stolen, lied, enslaved, violated and desacrated to further their own evil agendas. their agendas have a common goal, they are all in one way or anothers players of a huge game of risk.

this is not a generational war, this is september 11 for your digital rights.

we used to be able to drink water from a stream. now we must buy it in bottles. the guy busking in the local mall will be busted for music piracy, or be forced to pay an APRA fee if he plays covers of songs in order to get a licence to busk.

the war on piracy is a protection racket, like the war on drugs and the war on terra.

you now must pay top dollar to get

• clean water
• healthy 'organic' food
• 'fresh', ie 'pollution free' air - often mistaken for cool air.
• 'unspoiled' (ie by vast acres of self-similar housing developments, ads, human detritus,) wilderness
• free (as in beer, marijuhana, nelson mandella) software and data.
• i could go on but it's all just too upsetting.

who would have kids in this day and age? they'd be chipped by 6 to protect them from predators lurking on the internet. a bluetooth/802.11/gps/dsp implant to monitor and protect your kiddie 24x7. chipped kids get more rights than unchipped kids, and by chipped think 50cc tablet swallowed before leaving the house, not a permanent implant. this thing will keep an eye on your little darlings for as long as it is in your system, and they then shit it out and need to take another one to be 'protected'. they'll cost a bucket and sell faster than viagra and to be sure, you'll give 'em one with every meal. and who was ceo of some of the world's biggest drugs companies and high-tech bio-surveillance technology companies? big don.

If you fear bin Laden or Al Queda I think you're taking the threat a little too seriously. Since the attack on Tora Bora there simply haven't been any new bin Laden videos with actual new footage of the man himself.

On the other hand, America's enemies are not simply limited to crazy Arabic peoples bitter about America's hegemony. They include a very wary China, a not quite mentally stable North Korea, and a beaten but not cowed Iraq. The thing is, though, that they likely already have our secrets. So basically, it's way too late to worry about the possibility that this game is going to give away military secrets.

I was gonna say that since we planted a US Flag on the Moon, then basically we claimed it. (At least that's the way it works in cartoons.) But as I recall, we actually brought the flag back with us.

The US has limited outer space jurisdiction, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The treaty limited State sovereignty over outer space. Outer space was declared to be the common heritage of mankind. It prevented certain military operations in outer space and upon celestial bodies, specifically, the placing in orbit of any nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and the installation of such weapons on celestial bodies. Outer space was otherwise to be reserved for peaceful uses. Various other international conventions, such as the Moon Registration, and Liability Treaties, expand upon provisions found in the Outer Space Treaty.

The Moon Treaty of 1979 essentially stated that the exploration and use of the moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries.

Zoophillia WR0X0R!

If you're taking requests, I'd like to see Sarcasta in a bikini with a randy dolphin!

The Corporate Giants of this country have been able to pass, what, in practice, is now a constitutional amendment outlawing speech which they find, shall we say, "obscene".

From the judgement:

The conversion accomplished by the AEBPR program enables a purchaser of an ebook to engage in "fair use" of an ebook without infringing the copyright law; ... Defendent was indicted for alleged violations of [the DMCA] (emphisis added.)

I can almost hear the Equity Lords yelling "Bad Speech! You go Squish Now!"

Why don't you get your hand off your dick for 5 minutes and look for some info on EM transmitters.

I like petting kittens.

Do you honestly believe that the same device could transmit frequencies across the ENTIRE FUCKING EM SPECTRUM?!

Both narrowband and UWB can be harmful against lots of stuff, quoting US military sources,

an official from the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command stated that recent scientific advances in radio frequency (RF) weapons technology by several states raise significant concerns. Broadly speaking, these weapons use high power microwave energy, in either narrow or wideband form, to disrupt or destroy the high-density metal oxide semiconductor devices that are used in modern computers and sensors.....

Current technology has produced a 25-gigawatt ultra-wideband source, a 100-gigawatt UWB device is anticipated within a year, and finally, travelling wave devices are also being explored for UWB applications

When I was working in a Bacterial Genomics lab, I used to crave faster, more powerful computers to crunch through genomic data. This type of computing power is a dream for bioinformaticists who want to, for example, create targeted cures for bacterial disease based on specific genetic idioms.

What is unfortunate is that we have an expensive, tax-payer funded processor farm that is dedicated to the useless pursuit of studying weapons of mass destruction. A great text about the myths of US nuclear policy can be found in Michio Kaku's (with Dan Axelrod) To Win a Nuclear War. It's in the style of a book like "The Hacker Crackdown", well researched, and really interesting.

If you are interested in stopping Nuclear Weapons Research in the US, another great site is that of Nobel Peace Prize Winning group Intl. Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). I think it's telling to compare IPPNW's site to the Defense Department's Moronic Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team web site!

First of all, all that stuff is horribly outdated.

DD(x) is the future of the Navy. The current fleet of battleships run a system called AEGIS which runs on top of HP-UX. NT has very limited use in non-tatical systems. You have to understand, the Navy has a _very_ strict QA and development process and systems don't actually get used tactically for almost 10 years it seems.

The future OS to run on DD(x) is up for grabs right now. MS federal systems has teamed up with the Blue Team so if they win, expect to see MS having a bigger role. That's not necessarily a bad thing though because the system is based on Java so not as many bad things can happen. Either way, with the thorough QA process, they should even be able to configure NT to be secure after 10 years.

A nucular posture review is required by law. If you want to see the full report check out Defenselink.mil (PDF)

As to the specific recommendations, the only really worrying thing would be the insinuation that the DoD is investigating ways to utilize nuclear weapons in conventional tactical scenarios, but there's a hell of a lot of hurdles to clear before that can even be seriously considered, much less implemented. The nations listed in the LA Times report, the US' usual rogue's gallery of nations, were for the most part already included in the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan, which is highly-classified even God needs SIOP-ESI clearance to see it) as smaller attack options (Selected/Limited), going back through the Clinton Administration, so that isn't really some kind of groundbreaking new policy.

Furthermore, an understated policy of the US since the Gulf War has been to keep the nuclear option open in the event of some other mass attack (biological/chemical) as deterrence, so again, this isn't terribly new. I do find interesting that the DoD is looking more closely at new ways of neutralizing agents besides blowing up the factories and spreading them to the four winds though...

I can just see Rumsfeld now after getting wind of this discovery...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld charges in to brief reporters breathing heavily smelling of whiskey and sporting a wiked grin...

"This morning at 9am EST... *froth* *drool*... I ordered all US personnel out of Afghanistan in preparation for "testing" of a new... *froth* *snarl*... fusion bomb which will reduce most of Afghanistan far past the stone-age to sometime near the middle of the Precambrian era. *snarl* *spit*... That is all.

The CDC reports taht the vaccine is 93% effective. Which is much better than the 5% who survive without it, but it still sounds like even with a vaccinated US the terrorists could kill a fair number of people. Even according to the military the vaccine has some side effects that sound pretty nasty, but then I have no medical training so I have no idea how it compares to other vaccines. The military also reports that antibiotics can be effective if administered before symptoms appear. I have no idea how often or if it's true. I must admit I'm puzzled why there's so much trouble producing the vaccine. Louis Pasteur made an anthrax vaccine for animals in the 19C and the current human vaccine isn't looking to be a spring chicken either so it seems like pretty established tech. Seems more like the blocks are more incomptenance and buracracy.

In many ways I find smallpox scarier than anthrax, because it can be person to person transmitted. On this one, however, the US government does not appear to be completely asleep at the switch. It has ordered up 40 million doses of vaccine, but they won't be ready till 04. Oh well, hope the terrorists wait three years and I'm one of the lucky ones.

...Dubbya has his finger on the button, and in his other hand is a pen with which can sign into law all sorts of restrictions on civil liberties.

We had damned sure ask, and keep asking, what moral and legal right he has to order death and destruction to be rained down upon the people of other nations; to send American soldiers off to die in the ruins of Afghanistan; and to issue executive orders, and sign into law bills, restricting the freedoms of American citizens.

First of all, as the head of the executive branch of the government, part of the President's job is to lead the military. You ask what legal right he has to order send soldiers off to war? How about the blessing of the U.S. Constitution (Art. 2, sect. 2)? Granted, Congress supposedly has sole right to declare war according to the Constitution (Art. 1, sect. 8, clause 11) , but as of yesterday or the day before, Congress has already empowered the President to act as required. From all indications it would seem that Bush is being smarter and more sober about how and when to use his power than I would expect the likes of Clinton or his would-be Democratic successor to do (Clinton proved himself to be ineffective in this regard). The smartest thing Bush did was to appoint a very intelligent and field-proven staff for his cabinet (who would you trust in a military situation? A four-star general or one of Clinton's lawyers?). People like Powell and Rumsfeld are clearly up to the task of handling the terrorist situation and subsequent ferreting out of terrorists, and I feel fairly certain that Bush is not going to do something stupidly in opposition to advisors who probably know more about how to handle these situations than he does.

On the other issue, I've had this notion that the legislative branches of the government crafted laws with the President balancing that power by signing or vetoing legislation. The exception to this is most notably presidential executive orders, which obviously is a misbalance of power that I and many others feel should not be allowed constitutionally. Nevertheless, they are and have been used by presidents in growing frequency. Most questionable (by some at least) is the way that Clinton used them (more here). The jury is still out on how Bush will ultimately use or abuse them.

Finally, I'd like to say that even though we may have to fight political encroachments on our civil liberties (of which I am as concerned as anyone), the price to enjoy those liberties was paid for by blood. Those who decry invasions of countries hostile to our peaceful and free way of life in order to defend it have no right to those liberties. And their statements of opposition demonstrate a severe lack of understading of the cost of freedom.

Well, in the last century, the nations have reached some common accepted principles.

Among others, in the civil sector we have agreed upon that children must not work.

Concerning the military sector, we have at least the geneva convention.

Those rules are (more or less) adhered to.

I thought, there were also the NPT, ABM, but some people seem to be more equal than othersOf course, there is research and were several tests on both sides, as comment #191, but both sides have not installed a space-based weapon-system.

Chemical weaponry knocks you dead to, nonetheless the use is prohibited. Even the Nazis obeyed at least this rule as they did not use them in war (Hitler ordered the use of them, but the order was disobeyed)

Laws are often against human nature (instinct), history (slavery/feudal ages/...) and reality. Pray, tell me which law is not.
Thats civilisation.

BTW, here is the Outer Space Treaty.

Now let me guess, which of those other treaties are soon obsolete. I'll bet 1 Karma on Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

...he still is building the DNA Lounge.

Sometimes I wonder if the whole club is vapor and he's just maintaining an entertaining web site. I mean, the Pentagon only took 16 months.

This is absolutely wrong! I develop one of the website's for the DoD and this is just not correct. Section 508 compliance *IS* retroactive... You can check DefenseLINK for all of the regulations.

I work in a particular five-sided building in Arlington, VA. Part of my job involves tracking down classified information that has been leaked onto uncleared computers and networks and 'sanitizing' them (degaussers are my friend). If I could have one wish in this world, it would be to rip every 3.5" floppy drive out of every computer rated 'Secret' and above.

Computers are very good at blindly following instructions. Humans, however, tend to suffer from problems such as laziness, ignorance, contempt, or outright disregard for the rules (and in the worst cases, greed...). No one has ever heard of a computer that decided to disregard its programming. Every case I have worked began with human error.
By their very nature, computers can't break the rules, but humans definately do.

As for the hard drive issue, I see two solutions:
1. Have a single drive for the entire machine, and the classified Virtual Machines (VMs) would operate with an encrypted file and swap space. Modify the OS so that unencrypted info can exist only in volitile RAM (I believe OpenBSD already does this).

2. Run at least two hard drives, one for the host OS and unclassified VMs, the other encrypted for the classified VMs. This would be easier to conform with existing regulations on classified handling and storage.

First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).

One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.

So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.

Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.

Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.

Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.

Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.

Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!

If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned! ...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.

Anyways.

My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.

Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.

This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of .gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun ;)

Actually...I may have found it right here.

"So two years ago, we asked McKinsey and Company to start a very large marketing study for the Army and, as a result of a lot of their work, some of the insights they gave us is that we needed to do research-based advertising, understanding youth attitudes and needs. We had the Rand Corporation do a very large marketing study of more than 7,000 individuals, focusing precisely on youth attitudes and needs and how to communicate with today's 18- to 24-year-old. Every generation of 18-year-olds is different. Gen X is different from Gen Y, is different from today's 18- to 24-year-olds, is different from the one that will be here in a couple of years. So that research that we're doing, that market research, will now be an ongoing part of how the Army thinks about how it communicates with young people.

And later on...

"You will also note that in this advertising, we talk about 212 ways to be a soldier. We identify specific military specialties. Part of what we want them to understand is that the kind of interests they have in occupational training and work experience, they can get it through the Army; that they should come and explore those 212 ways to be a soldier to find the one that's right for them, whether it is as an infantryman, or as an artilleryman, or as a medical technician, a computer repairman, a helicopter repairman, a wheeled-vehicle generator repairman. We want to drive them to the web site where they're going to get more of that information about the opportunities that are available, and help them make an informed decision. Our goal is to make the Army one of the options that they are considering for the future."

And on the costs...

"Q: Could you talk about the budget for this and how much the -- particularly how much the spot will be that's debuting tomorrow night, and then the overall budget numbers?

Caldera: It's about $150 million for the advertising campaign. Over the last few years, actually, the amount of money we put into advertising has not kept pace with inflation in advertising. So it's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past. We are trying to take advantage of the ability to buy earlier and get better prices and be more targeted in the shows that actually fit the demographic that we're trying to reach.

And once more...

Wolf: The key with any advertising is understanding the target that that advertising is directed at. And that's we did, is we dug into our target and really understood them. To our target, to those young adults, "Be all you can be" was not motivating.

This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.

Anyways...if anyone finds anything else, please reply =)

----

First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).

One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.

So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.

Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.

Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.

Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.

Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.

Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!

If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned! ...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.

Anyways.

My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.

Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.

This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of .gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun ;)

Actually...I may have found it right here.

"So two years ago, we asked McKinsey and Company to start a very large marketing study for the Army and, as a result of a lot of their work, some of the insights they gave us is that we needed to do research-based advertising, understanding youth attitudes and needs. We had the Rand Corporation do a very large marketing study of more than 7,000 individuals, focusing precisely on youth attitudes and needs and how to communicate with today's 18- to 24-year-old. Every generation of 18-year-olds is different. Gen X is different from Gen Y, is different from today's 18- to 24-year-olds, is different from the one that will be here in a couple of years. So that research that we're doing, that market research, will now be an ongoing part of how the Army thinks about how it communicates with young people.

And later on...

"You will also note that in this advertising, we talk about 212 ways to be a soldier. We identify specific military specialties. Part of what we want them to understand is that the kind of interests they have in occupational training and work experience, they can get it through the Army; that they should come and explore those 212 ways to be a soldier to find the one that's right for them, whether it is as an infantryman, or as an artilleryman, or as a medical technician, a computer repairman, a helicopter repairman, a wheeled-vehicle generator repairman. We want to drive them to the web site where they're going to get more of that information about the opportunities that are available, and help them make an informed decision. Our goal is to make the Army one of the options that they are considering for the future."

And on the costs...

"Q: Could you talk about the budget for this and how much the -- particularly how much the spot will be that's debuting tomorrow night, and then the overall budget numbers?

Caldera: It's about $150 million for the advertising campaign. Over the last few years, actually, the amount of money we put into advertising has not kept pace with inflation in advertising. So it's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past. We are trying to take advantage of the ability to buy earlier and get better prices and be more targeted in the shows that actually fit the demographic that we're trying to reach.

And once more...

Wolf: The key with any advertising is understanding the target that that advertising is directed at. And that's we did, is we dug into our target and really understood them. To our target, to those young adults, "Be all you can be" was not motivating.

This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.

Anyways...if anyone finds anything else, please reply =)

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What's really odd about the Netcraft link above is the history of the DoD website. As of 11 Oct 00, their OS was listed as "unknown" (and the DTIC's OS was unknown as of 12 Oct 00; looks like they all swicthed at the same time). Maybe that's what the article was referring to?

And if you want to see something really odd, try Netcrafting to the DTIC's IP addr. Their httpd/OS information was changed 9 Dec 00, which is tomorrow. And if you're not into conspiracy theories, then just tell yourself that it's because the run on GMT and they just made the switch to a new machine like ten minutes ago (it's currently 00:41 as I write this).

-B

The first paragraph of the CNN story didn't really seem to jive with my current perception of the Department of Defense, so I checked out the story at the DoD website. The story, at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2000/b12062000_ bt729-00.html, doesn't make any mention of the reason cited at CNN. I wonder who in the Department of Defense said that? At any rate, I think it would be rather naive to think that the DoD would spend all that money soley for the purpose of preventing "widespread anxiety." I do not doubt that was one of their reasons, but the reasons cited in the DoD news release seem much more valid to me. In my opinion, CNN got a big list of reasons, but tossed all of them out except the one which would probably get the most reaction from the masses. I mean, of course the military could use this kind of technology, but that's not newsworthy! But if CNN can report something interesting that will get them more public reaction, then they would certainly do that. Objective news just isn't interesting to most people anymore, or so it seems.

DOD thinks infrastucture hacks could be lethal: hit a hospital, for instance, or mess with a traffic control system (air OR ground. . .) Or hack a Fission plant's control system. . . .

Just because there has not been a lethal hack to date, does not imply that a lethal hack via an exploit doesn't exist. . .

http://www.cdi.org/Issues/Nuk eAccidents/accidents.htm

Q: Why didn't you tell us about these problems last fall after the first test? I mean, why are we hearing about this now?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Honestly?

Q: Sure.

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't see then as problems.

Q: What? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't see them as a problem. I mean, and maybe it's because we're lowly material developers -- you know, all we do is test. But, yeah, there's anomalies that happen on every test. And in fact, I would be concerned when we start doing tests if we don't have anomalies.

Q: The question is why you didn't tell us about the anomaly?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: My answer? Didn't think it was that important, to be honest with you.

Q: We were told last fall it was a successful test, things went well.

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yes. Yes. And it did. And I will say the same thing. It was a successful test; went well. Were there anomalies? Sure.

Q: Well why weren't we told about them?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't think it was that big of a deal. To be honest, I --

http://www.cdi.org/Issues/Nuk eAccidents/accidents.htm

Q: Why didn't you tell us about these problems last fall after the first test? I mean, why are we hearing about this now?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Honestly?

Q: Sure.

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't see then as problems.

Q: What? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't see them as a problem. I mean, and maybe it's because we're lowly material developers -- you know, all we do is test. But, yeah, there's anomalies that happen on every test. And in fact, I would be concerned when we start doing tests if we don't have anomalies.

Q: The question is why you didn't tell us about the anomaly?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: My answer? Didn't think it was that important, to be honest with you.

Q: We were told last fall it was a successful test, things went well.

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yes. Yes. And it did. And I will say the same thing. It was a successful test; went well. Were there anomalies? Sure.

Q: Well why weren't we told about them?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Didn't think it was that big of a deal. To be honest, I --