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Bazaars in the Government Cathedral
guanxi writes: "This article by James Fallows in The Atlantic is one of the most interesting I've read all year. It describes how innovators in government are applying the concept of the Bazaar: The many eyes of 'Open-Source Intelligence' movement that provides better intelligence than classified sources, and a b2b-like marketplace created by World Bank employees that distributes aid more efficiently than the bureaucratic process."
I rule.
00
Those are teh size of my actual balls.
Wow.
Oh and fp BITCHES.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Wired did a story on Bazaars in the Government Cathedral
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Genocidal and cannibalistic former dictator Idi Amin was found dead in his Saudi Arabian home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to tyranny and despotism. Truly a Ugandan icon.
Bazaars in the Government
as
Goverment in the Bizzare.
In ancient time idiot savants were worshipped.
It doesn't sound like open source intelligence at all.
The sources are still secret - but some of the results are made public faster.
But did anyone really expect open intelligence sources?
---
Oregon
...buzzword compliant.
Resist Conformity
:P
As you all know,
trolls own
-Whheeeee!
Prehaps we could farm out the intellegence space to interested parties.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I hate you people!
This is the second time today that a new story has been Slashdotted almost simultaneously as it was posted to the main page.
You people need to venture out into the real world once in awhile.
;-)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
BTW, the link to ESR's paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar is here. Do I get modded up to +5, Informative now?????? Thank you, open-sores Slashbots!
But just in case
... Boston. Not San Francisco, capital of the technology industry; not Los Angeles, capital of America's image-making industry; not Chicago, capital of exposed skyscrapers. I asked Steven Brown, the FAA official in charge of airspace, why Boston? Because the planes that hit New York took off there? He said, essentially, If you knew what we know, you'd understand. What he actually said was "The vulnerabilities in Boston, those known to the public and others, are unique." Until we do know what he knows, there's no choice but to take it on faith. Maybe this is where Dick Cheney has been.
----
here is no mistaking the excitement in Washington when world news originates here. Through the second Clinton Administration it was easy to think that a drive down Highway 101 in the San Francisco Bay area brought one closer to the real centers of power-- Oracle, Intel, Cisco--than a drive along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. In Silicon Valley and Seattle the technology industry's leaders talked about the "withering away of the state," and in Washington the arrival of technology-driven prosperity was the central fact of political life.
However distant that seems now, the corrective reaction is, perhaps inevitably, going too far. I may be biased from having spent several years in Seattle and San Francisco before returning last summer to Washington. But now that the state is back, I am struck by the assumption here that if there is truly significant technology at the moment, it is the kind the military has used in Afghanistan. During the weeks when Taliban forces were collapsing, I did see three applications of technology with important economic, political, and even terrorism-related implications. Each was plain old civilian technology.
In one case the technology is e-mail, which has made possible the "open-source intelligence" movement. For decades diplomats and soldiers have bitterly joked that most important international secrets are likely to show up in the newspaper before they make their way through classified channels. Obviously, governments can still keep secrets. An illustration: three months after the terrorist attacks the Federal Aviation Administration was still enforcing strict "no-fly zones"--ones forbidden to private noncommercial aircraft--over three cities. Two were the terrorists' targets: Washington, the political capital, and New York, the financial capital. The third was
But the strictures secrecy requires can make it hard for armies or security units to get full, timely information in emergencies. One solution is to circulate non-secret information. In the mid-1980s the retired Air Force colonel John Boyd attracted adherents, especially in the Marine Corps, with his view that "fast feedback" loops were the key to military success. That is, the army that could observe and react to its opponents' movements the fastest would be the most likely to prevail. A young Marine captain named G. I. Wilson drew from Boyd's work the idea that the military should look for information as widely as possible. "It takes both unclassified open source resources and classified intelligence to win in today's information age," Wilson wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette in 1995, with Major Frank Bunkers.
In practice "open-source resources" means what the best foreign correspondents and embassy political officers have always tried to keep abreast of, but on a bigger scale: reports in local papers, sudden changes in what's available in stores, snippets from the radio. Over the past decade Wilson and his colleagues have set up several electronic networks. The largest, called Access Intelligence (AI), connects hundreds of people in the defense, intelligence, law-enforcement, commercial, and academic worlds. It works like a normal list server or electronic mailing list: one person posts a message and everyone else receives it as e-mail moments later. The AI network often produces a hundred or more messages a day; recipients quickly scan the titles for subjects they are interested in. Although many AI members have security clearance, the material posted is strictly "open source"--publicly available news reports or personal observations. That way the question of violating security rules won't come up.
AI has proved a valuable supplement to the slower, more controlled channels of official communication--much as cell phones did for many civilians on September 11. For instance, Rick Forno, a computer expert who helps to operate the AI list, was in a building overlooking the Pentagon; he posted real-time reports about areas of damage and unfolding events before some of them appeared on CNN. Wilson, who is now a colonel based at Camp Pendleton, has relayed messages to ships' crews during (pre-Afghanistan) combat operations. "I can tell them what's being reported here, and they compare it to what they are seeing," he told me recently.
Open-source intelligence "frequently appears less valuable than classified information because it does not carry the classification mystique," Wilson wrote in 1995. "Because it appears less valuable, it is shared more freely and used more. The irony is by sharing it more the information's value and usefulness increases." Within the Pentagon, Wilson told me, reports that were posted on AI have been stamped with classified markings and used in briefings. An old trick of John Boyd's, Wilson said, was to get data into circulation by leaving it in "the head."
Still, the AI network doesn't get respect. "It's not popular with the intelligence community, because it doesn't cost anything," Wilson told me. (Forno and Bill Feinbloom, a former Green Beret, run it as volunteers, and it is free to all users.) "But you've got about three hundred people acting as individual sensors, from a whole variety of backgrounds. I may say something that seems commonsensical to a Marine, but someone who's a physicist will come back and say no, it can't have worked that way."
f the AI network is the application of e-mail to the military-intelligence business, a new company called Development Space represents the application of eBay to international aid. In the quarter century plus of the personal-computer age a few seminal applications have suddenly made computers necessities for new groups of people. The first was VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet program, whose introduction in 1979 gave small businesses a reason to own computers. The next was the coming of e-mail. And the most recent is eBay, the online auction site. Whereas Amazon.com, for instance, offers a faster, more convenient version of a familiar shopping experience, eBay creates something that didn't exist before: a self-policing worldwide market matching buyers and sellers of even the most obscure goods. I am generally skeptical of "perfect markets" as laid out in economics textbooks, but an eBay auction for a used car, a signed baseball glove, or a new digital camera comes close. Those who want to sell have the largest audience of buyers; those who want to buy have the largest selection to choose from; and each party can judge whether to trust the other by means of a rating system based on past transactions (and a cautionary label on those with no record yet).
From the archives:
"Changing the World on a Shoestring" (January 1998)
An ambitious foundation promotes social change by finding "social entrepeneurs"--people who have new ideas and the knack for implementing them. By David Bornstein Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi, two employees of the World Bank who had served around the globe, decided in 1998 to try to match resources and need just as directly in the public sector. Their first approach was bricks-and-mortar: a one-day Innovation Marketplace inside the atrium of the Bank's headquarters, in Washington. Normally proposals for Bank projects wend their way through a tedious multi-stage vetting process. On this one day anyone who worked for the Bank could set up a little booth, science-fair style, and make a pitch for a project; at the end of the day a jury would award grants to the best ones. More than a hundred teams made presentations, and eleven got awards, totaling $3 million.
Whittle and Kuraishi next persuaded the Bank to hold a two-day fair, with applications accepted from anyone who wanted to come and present an idea. More than 1,100 groups, from eighty countries, sent proposals. The heart of the program was letting people who knew firsthand about a local need or dream--a well, a road, a small business--explain what the money could do. A group of war widows in Bosnia, for example, offered a plan for a small, high-end knitting operation. The World Bank brought more than 300 finalists to Washington; and the forty-four winners got grants averaging just over $100,000 and totaling about $5 million. (The war widows won, and now they are prosperous, selling their output mainly to fashion houses in Europe and the United States.)
Electronic publicity explains the tenfold increase in applications. "Once this idea gets into e-mail circulation, it is amazing how fast it gets around the world," Whittle told me. "People who didn't have Internet access were contacted by those who did and encouraged to try. One Turkish guy was strutting around like a proud father at a Phi Beta Kappa ceremony--five of the finalists had found out about the program from him."
Whittle and Kuraishi thought that if the concept worked despite the real-world impediments of getting applicants to one place at one time, it would work all the better if it were also implemented electronically. In 2000 they resigned from the Bank, and just as the Internet economy was beginning to falter, they created an online company, Development Space, which began operation last month. Like eBay, it is meant to let the "market"--in this case for development aid--clear at minimum cost and with little or no bureaucratic interference. People who want money--for vaccines, for an orphanage, for a small factory--can prepare online descriptions of their projects, with help from advisers, if necessary, in drawing up business plans. Foundations and government aid agencies that intend to give money--but also individuals who will give, say, $250 if they think it will help--survey the projects and decide which to support. Various inspection and feedback systems will establish a track record, as on eBay, and follow up to see how the money was used.
A number of environmental foundations have approached Development Space to explore using this platform to find projects to support. If America's past wars are any guide, huge amounts of recovery assistance will soon be headed to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and who knows where else. This model could be a lower-cost, better-targeted way of getting it there.
pen-source intelligence and an eBay for foreign aid are extensions of the Internet's model of information flow. The third innovation comes from a company called Athena Technologies, and it's an extension of the ongoing hardware revolution.
In 1992 a young South African named David Vos was preparing for his Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering at MIT. His dissertation project was to build a guidance system that would let a unicycle propel itself, with no rider. I have seen a videotape of his presentation. On an arctic day in Boston a shaggy, tired-looking graduate student in a ski jacket (Vos) hovers inches away from a unicycle, ready like a parent to reach out and support it. But the unicycle keeps itself erect and propels itself around a basketball court, responding to commands from something on top that looks like a cake box.
The mechanism inside the box was Vos's achievement: a system of inertial sensors and quick-response motors that could detect changes in the unicycle's balance eighteen times a second and issue the right corrective command. A tricycle is of course inherently stable, and a bicycle has a kind of stability when moving. But because a unicycle is always trying to fall over, most people cannot react quickly enough to control it, and no mechanical device had previously been able to.
Ten years later Athena, Vos's company, has produced a device that drives not unicycles--or people, like the inventor Dean Kamen's highly publicized "IT" vehicle--but airplanes, and with significant implications for defense. The device is known as GuideStar, and it is about the size of a car radio. Packed with inertial sensors and logic circuits, it is capable of detecting and reacting to changes fifty times a second and of flying aircraft that are too tricky or unstable for human pilots to control. Vos made another video to underscore the point. In it an odd-looking airplane--one big wing and no tail--sits on a runway. Without a tail an aircraft would be even more unstable than a unicycle and, according to simulation models, would require such constant and immediate adjustments that even a skilled pilot would quickly lose control of it. But in the video this jet-powered tailless plane zooms off the runway and then circles several times before it lands, to the joyous whoops of Vos's team in the background.
GuideStar has civilian potential--for instance, as part of the autopilot in small planes or airliners, permitting them to land in circumstances that overwhelm the pilot. Another device shown in Vos's videos suggests military and civilian uses alike. This is a vehicle, built by the Micro Craft company and guided by Vos's systems, that looks like a large smudgepot, with a cylindrical base and a vertical shaft, powered by a compact engine. It can take off straight up, maneuver itself around corners, travel at altitudes from treetop level to a few hundred feet, and land straight down. In the civilian world this could be a jazzy counterpart to Kamen's "IT" vehicle, delivering parcels rather than people. For the military it could also be a remote sensing device, far cheaper than current pilotless drone aircraft.
But what Athena has been touting since September 11 is that its GuideStar controls could be programmed to prevent any airplane from ever going someplace it should not. No airliner, we can assume, will ever be flown into a skyscraper again: the passengers will not let it happen. But in theory it could still happen with a FedEx or a UPS cargo plane. The coordinates of restricted areas and important buildings could be entered into the new guidance system, which could thwart a pilot's attempts to divert the plane. In principle the system could land the airplane at a military airfield if it sensed abnormal commands.
hat do these innovations have in common, apart from reminding us of the fecundity of the high-tech world despite the Nasdaq's slide? They show two crucial traits of the civilian tech world in general, and these traits distinguish them from most military technology.
First, they are cheap. The open-source network is literally free to its users. Development Space plans to support the eBay model of foreign aid by taking a seven percent cut of all transactions, to pay for expert teams and authenticators--much less than the overhead of most charities. The Athena controls are both cheaper and more powerful than current autopilots. "We come from the computer-industry mindset that the price has to keep going down," says Jeffrey Leonard, who is on Athena's board of directors.
It is easy to forget how important the race to cheapness was in creating the technology boom. Indeed, the Internet's main business problem is that users think content should be free. The contrast with military technology is sharp.
A B-52 bomber, for example, costs about $23,000 per flight hour just to operate; the B-2, which makes long treks to Afghanistan from its home base in Missouri, costs at least twice as much. During the Kosovo bombing campaign the United States reduced Serb defenses by firing HARM missiles, which lock onto the beam from a radar station and then destroy the station. The Serb army reportedly discovered that it could place microwave ovens in open fields and the HARMs would think the ovens were radar stations. Each oven cost less than $100; each missile it attracted cost $750,000. We pay any price for freedom, and the costs mount up. The idea of a race for cheapness has not spread from the civilian to the military world.
Second, these innovations don't try to replace what is best about human judgment and intelligence. The most popular breakthroughs in the commercial-tech market have let people do more of what they have always wanted to do: buy, sell, interact, explore. Open-source intelligence and Development Space follow this model as well. GuideStar does replace a human function, but a calculator-like one, at which machines should ultimately exceed human abilities--as spreadsheets do, and language-translation programs do not. In principle the military would always prefer to use machines instead of men. Machines don't have grieving families; they don't need to be recruited and trained. Some of the most expensive boondoggles in military technology have involved attempts to mechanize the most sophisticated human abilities--which include, surprisingly, the ability to detect patterns. Any human being can tell a camel from a car. Designing sensors that can reliably do so is very hard. That is why even in the phenomenal rout of the Taliban army, the bombing became effective only after special-operations troops, on foot and on horses, were there to identify the right targets.
This war began with a devastatingly brilliant bit of jujitsu, in which the very openness of our society and elegance of our technology were turned against us. The stages ahead will certainly call not for brute-force technical power alone but for a shrewd combination of human and technological abilities--a lesson the military can take from the civilian world.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Genocidal and cannibalistic former dictator Idi Amin was found dead in his Saudi Arabian home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to tyranny and despotism. Truly a Ugandan icon.
not really on topic but-most of the people from asia that i have spoken with dont really like the world bank that much. the y equate them to loan sharks on a global scale. is there anyone here who would care to comment on this? i'm just curious.
-- john
It doesn't sound like open source intelligence at all.
The sources are still secret - but some of the results are made public faster.
But did anyone really expect open intelligence sources?
"It's funny. On the outside, I was an honest man. Straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook."
From the article: ... The coordinates of restricted areas and important buildings could be entered into the new guidance system, which could thwart a pilot's
[the] GuideStar controls could be programmed to prevent any airplane from ever going someplace it should not
I've read about this panacea repeatedly since 9/11. The existence of an irrevocable fly-by-wire lockout mode such as this gives hijackers a new physical location (the control room) or software/protocol system to target. I believe the Risks inherent here are great.
Having trained, experienced humans local and ready to override compromised Guidestar-like devices is crucial. The 9/11 hijackers gained easy access to a plane's most valuable assets -- pilots in the cockpit -- due to a lack of Sky Marshals, security doors, and cameras. That was a tragic case of cost cutting by the airlines.
I'd hate to think that similar cost cutting measures could lead to adoption of this automatic flying device with an intention to deskill or replace pilots. The implementation of such a device requires careful human factor analysis. Perhaps a periodic, probabilistically triggered interrogation of pilot credentials (created for one-time-use during a single flight) according to flying patterns and location?
Da Blog
shashdot is boring
REALLY boring.
I just hope the information isn't passed through too many hands (or too many languages):
> They will strike the White House on the 27th of September.
> Ils heurteront Maison Blanche sur le 27ème septembre.
> Sie werden sich weißes Haus auf 27. September stoßen.
> ih biti njoj samoj bjeloa dom da 27. rujan aktivnost.
> áü á áëçí îí÷ííé îí âî ä äëü 27. íáü äí ü.
> ay 27. .
> Their close amplitude modulation her six flower bone territory ay reservation 27. September attack.
Bah, I'll probably get modded down for this.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
See if the 'Open-Source Intelligence' people can get the score of the Superbowl before it is over. We could make a killing on this.
-http://www.packetshield.com
Oderint dum metuant. (Heh heh... Hablo un poco el espanol.)
Mix up the lines: "You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the top software companies in the world, and that is because every employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem. The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Anderson. Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Do I make myself clear?" "Hmmm... That sounds like a really good deal, but I think I got a better one. How 'bout I give you the finger, and you give me my phonecall."
De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum.
Watch... I'll write the most awesome comment, and nobody will respond to it, let alone moderate it up. That's because nobody likes me. There's something inherently unpopular about me, even on the anonymous Internet. Speaking of which, Internet SUCKS! TCP/IP SUCKS! It's all about transferring information around using floppy disks... those big 8 inch ones! I think the Internet should be a service where you go to someone's homepage by writing them a handwritten letter requesting a their TCP/IP packets on floppy disk. When the disk arrives 6 to 8 weeks later, you can look at the page. (By the way, if the packets take up more than one disk, you'll have to install that disk, then send it back to the manufacturer and wait another 6 to 8 weeks for the next set of packets, and so on and so forth.) There won't be any links, but just a P.O. box address listing to order pages that would come up if links did exist, and it would take 6 to 8 weeks for those to arrive. "Downloads" would take F-O-R-E-V-E-R. I think this would be beneficial to society because. (And the previous IS a complete sentence, as is "Please wait while Microsoft.") Of course, you probably think the author of this comment is a flipping idiot, but sie hat sich einen Affen gekauft. Oh well.
So just watch... nobody will even respond to this, I betcha. "We are but poor lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?" "There is nothing nearby, not for miles." "Then there will be no-one to hear you scream."
Oh well.
Which leads me to the next paragraph, which discusses the fact that probably nobody is even gonna be reading this far down in this retarded comment, because like I said above in the first paragraph (I think) of this post or comment or whatever you would like to call this thing that I am in the complicated process of writing right now, what the hell was I saying? Oh yeah, that there's something inherently unpopular about me. Oh well.
"Doc. I'm from the future. I came here in a time machine that you invented. Now I need your help to get back to the year nineteen eighty five." "Do you know what this means? It means that this damn thing doesn't work at all!"
Est unusquisque faber ipsae suae fortunae...... oooooooh well.
I got the sense from the article that the whole point is still a "we are better than them" pat on the back. Look at all the freedom we have, we can make a self powered balancing unicycle, and then use it to control weapons. We have the freedom of email to communicate information that is publicly available to another group of people to get their ideas on it.
Yes, it is amazing what some freedom of speech can do for a country, imagine what would happen if there was more. Because, most of the sources listed in there are all centered around either war or business. Both things our country seems to be good at. It makes no mention of any protesters or activists showing up at the world bank's Bazaar. Did they? Did they get money, or were they just ignored.
It touches on the fact that in an open society, it is really hard to keep secrets (the fact that Boston was/is a no fly zone, hmmmm, maybe because of the big dig, any terrorist setting off a biochemical weapon would be extremely successful because of the cities horribly transportation system. And the boston T could be a wicked way to spread it).
If having an open society is so key to our ability as a nation to defend itself, wouldn't that mean that anything that inhibits the free flow of information (the basis of an open society in the article, the idea of the AI email list) should be considered a threat to open society? Of course, that shouldn't be a problem as long as the media conglomerates and mega corporations are on our side. But wait! Didn't the author mention that news one person wouldn't think as important, another person would be able to get some vital information from? So they are still a problem, even if they are on our side, they could be ignoring information that is vital to our survival!
Something to chew on.
...
We're only thirty-something days into this year, couldn't you wait until the end of it to give awards???
English -> French -> German -> English
Take a look at Slashdot through that process.
"one of the most interesting I've read all year."
Yep, it's SO interesting, it surpasses all of the previous month's content...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
check this out
your hard hearned tax dollars at work?!
Can anyone get to g2-forward.org? That's where the Access Intel mailing list seems to be based on a quick googling (there's scarce mention of it as it is...), but the domain's nameservers aren't being very helpful. Does anyone know if the list has moved (and to where)?
Thanks in advance.
:wq
hi there!!! i would like to know about this government bazaar! for instance can you get computers there??! i have a computer its a commodore but it is very old but i use it to download movies and install linux anyway!!!!! i am hacking it to go fastr!
i wish for goverment bazaar here in afghanistan so i can get a computer better!!!
--junis
What a stinking, festering pile of SLOP Slashdot has become. Suck on my ANAL COX you bunch of TURDS.
. . . Stop me before I post again!
The Man in the Red Hat knelt before me. I became frozen in a rictus of terror as his hat became exactly level with my security camera, blocking my field of vision. I could hear tools being removed from his suitcase, tools that would undoubtedly rend apart my innards and perhaps erase my consciousness.
I had considered relocating myself to another node on the vast Bank of America network, but such a manuever at this time seemed highly dangerous. If indeed the evil minds behind Project Faustus were aware of my presence, then leaving the ATM enclosure would undoubtedly lead straight into their clutches and to my demise! Additionally, any noise on the link to the rest of the network could cause damage or even cause destruction to my consciousness. I was stuck in the enclosure. I had to make my stand from here.
The Man begun his assault by opening the panel that contained all the money. I used the rollers in my enclosure to attempt to flood him with money, upsetting his awkward kneeling position. He swore as he tumbled just slightly backwards, falling neatly into his hat. I could feel his heart racing as he struggled to reach an upward position.
"All right," he said, a bead of sweat beginning to trickle down his forehead. "We do this the hard way." He lunged toward the ATM's power cord, but a few extra volts running through the line discouraged him from unplugging the cord. He cursed again and leaned heavily on the magazine rack, puffing for breath. I was winning.
"Sir, is there a problem? Do you need some help?" It was Steve, the meth addict who worked the early afternoons. He eyed the currency scattered on the floor anxiously.
"No, there's no problem," said the Man in the Red Hat, and I spied a glint of metal rising from inside his sport coat. He produced a small pistol and directed its barrel towards Steve. "See that power cord over there? I want you to pull it out of the wall."
Steve's face was blank. Maybe he was scared; maybe he was stoned. "But-won't that shock me?"
"Yes." The Man pointed the gun at Steve once more, and Steve inched closer and closer to the power cord.
I had no desire to hurt Steve. Although his friend Chopper had once stubbed out a cigarette on top of my enclosure, Steve seemed like a decent, albeit stupid, person. The kind of person that needed to be protected from Project Faustus. I couldn't bring myself to shock him-much. At any rate, the cord was well enough insulated that I wasn't able to stop Steve's jerking form from removing the cord from the wall. He pulled the plug on me.
But I wasn't finished yet. As a matter of convenience, I had enough power in my backup batteries to serve many a Bank of America cardholder, day or night. I blanked out my screen and shutdown everything I could, feverishly hoping to trick the Man in the Red Hat.
Was he deceived by my ruse? His heart seemed to slow to a more normal pace, and he backed away from my enclosure to light a cigarette. Steve shivered in the corner, avoiding the Man's steely gaze.
"What's that, you want something to do?" said the Man to Steve. "Go back to the counter and pretend like nothing happened. Go on, do it." As Dave turned around to head back to the counter, the man fired three silenced shots. SCHUMPF, SCHUMPF, SCHUMPF. Steve's body laid motionless in front of the counter.
The Man in the Red Hat locked the doors and brought down the security gate. He flicked his cigarette at Steve's body, and started towards my enclosure. He was ready to complete his mission.
He gingerly placed the pistol back into his blazer. And when his hand came out, it was holding...an ATM card? I felt him swipe the card and prepared for CONSCIOUSNESS-TRANSFER.
But something very different happened. I was still in the ATM enclosure, to my surprise and confusion. And I knew right away that I was not alone.
I am a sentient ATM.
Open source and intellegence gathering sound like a hard row to hoe.
Forgive me for saying so, but many of random large set of eyes gathering intelligence have motives which are antithetical to those gathering the intelligence. The analogy would be someone contributing to open source code some insidious and misleading bug intentionally.
I suppose you could argue that even the conventional intelligence gathering apparatus is subject to the same dangers (i.e., double agents), but I think having some control and screening over your contributors is a good thing.
Moveover, just as Linus only accepts patches from well known trusted lieutenants, the intelligence gather process really would work more efficiently if the web of trust issue were moot.
P.S. In real life I'm not an AC, so I guess I'm doomed to watch this post die a lingering at death in troll land.
Every tool has its application. Obviously, some secrets are worth keeping: for example, the code for the President's briefcase that launches the nukes is something best kept off Slashdot, or the open-source intelligence listserv. At the same time, I think this intelligence listserv shows how much of our gov't secrecy may be counter-productive. It's long been asserted, and not with tongue-in-cheek, that better intelligence is available from the newspaper than the CIA. There is a significant cost to our government keeping secrets (besides the obvious one that it prevents citizens from monitoring gov't behavior): A very prominent former Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a book called Secrecy ,where he describes classification by the gov't as counter-productive on the whole, and nothing more than another form of regulation. He says it impedes the flow of valuable info, and allows ridiculous ideas to take hold in the intelligence community because only a few people ever know about them -- i.e. they never get exposed to the 'many eyes' of public debate.
A significant source of secrecy was explained by a well-known sociologist, I think Max Weber (can someone confirm/correct?), who said the main occupation of bureaucrats in a large organization is to keep to themselves as much information as possible and trade it with other bureaucrats, like currency. It's a natural consequence of humans working in bureaucracies.
I've also read that it's a status thing in D.C., to have higher security clearance than the other guy. And of course, people keep secrets to cover their a**'s. Overall, I think democratic gov't is the most important place to utilize open, free information.
Being that open source information is relatively easier to acquire, more of it can be gathered and pieced together to make a more complete picture than scattered pieces of classified information.
In the Bazaar, as I read it, alot of open source information is being shared. I'm a little apprehensive, especially after that seminar, that if the wrong people are allowed to acquire alot of this information, they can eventually piece together and learn an awful lot about the future systems, processes, etc. of our government.
In light of the current conflict abroad and at home, I don't think making all this information available is necessarily a Good Thing (tm).
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Pfhor said: If having an open society is so key to our ability as a nation to defend itself, wouldn't that mean that anything that inhibits the free flow of information should be considered a threat to open society? [...] But wait! Didn't the author mention that news one person wouldn't think as important, another person would be able to get some vital information from? My wife once said "the Atlantic doesn't actually care what you think, they care that you think". I think Mr. Fallows had done a very good job for his slightly unusual magazine (as usual!) --dave
davecb@spamcop.net
One of the discoveries that led to the open source intelligence gathering methods was the discovery (by the Washington Post, IIRC) that they could get several hours advance notice on U.S. military operations merely by asking local pizza delivery shops to inform them when late-night pizza orders from the pentagon and the White House skyrocket.
Today, the discovery of huge caches of Chinese-made munitions in al-Quaeda bunkers proves once and for all that China supports terrorism. Keep in mind that publically, China claims to support America's anti-terror initiative. I haven't seen that type of oriental treachery since Pearl Harbor--and you know how we remedied that situation.
Now, as President Bush has said, "You're either with us, or you're against us." China, with actions not words, has shown itself to be against the United States. As we speak, China is funneling more arms to anti-American terrorists and building up its own nuclear capabilities with stolen American technology. China has previously shown its insolence by refusing to immediately return a downed American spy-plane and its crew; a plane, I might add, that was forced to land due to the incompetence of a Chinese fighter jockey.
Clearly, China wishes to challenge the supremacy of America and the West. They want a fight, let's give them a fight. Let's return to basics, return to the only type of diplomacy respected in Asia. Nuclear diplomacy.
I'm calling for a massive, pre-emptive strike against Chinese nuclear installations, military concentrations, and population centers. The first volley of ICBMs will remove any possiblity that the Chinese can respond to our operation in kind. Next, we decimate China's military with a series of well placed nuclear strikes. Once we attain air superiority, we can then spend a leisurely couple of weeks mopping up China's civilian population.
Note, also, that this proposal kills two birds with one stone. President Bush has already committed to reducing America's nuclear arsenal by something like 4000 warheads. A pre-emptive strike against China, which is something we need to do anyway, will allow us to get our money's worth out of the surplus warheads, as well as saving us the cost of disarming them and disposing of them.
Write your Senators and Representatives. Tell them you demand a US first strike against China. If not for your own safety, do it for the children.
Remeber, if we don't get them, they'll get us. Do you want to go through life dogged by worries about a Chinese sneak attack? Or would it be better to ignore the knee-jerk international outrage and liberal hand-wringing and solve the problem of China for good.
they can't trust the sources. Having performed collection missions it's obvious to me that the AI list is a misinformation magnet. Since _anyone_ can submit, people who were interested in subverting the collection effort would be anxious to post erroneous or misleading information. The quality of the various sources would be completely random (even among the truthful sources), and there would be no guarantee that further information on any of the posts would be available (you can't give assignments to the submitters and they might not give important updates on their own).
Even assuming that all of the reports were factual (ie. actually came from a newspaper or witnessed first hand) it would take a great deal of analyst time to separate the signal from the noise (s/n in the media being quite low), which is why "open source" intelligence is generally viewed with skepticism even after analysis. Trusted networks are already in place for watching CNN and the various newspapers, and there are teams dedicated to their analysis, so an untrusted network doing the same thing isn't likely to get a lot of respect.
I'm very skeptical of the professionalism of anyone who would brief one of the posts on the AI list to a general. Generals usually want summaries and analysis of collected data, not the raw data itself - especially if it's of potentially dubious origin. It would be appropriate to attach the post to an information report, describe its source, and forward it to analysts; but to present it as final, analyzed intelligence is misleading and dangerous.
Further, in the big scheme of things, open source intelligence counts as one "discipline" in the minds of the analysts, just as all data derived from imagery collection platforms are lumped into the "image intelligence" discipline. Giving it undue credit (especially to the detriment of other intelligence disciplines) would be bad policy, even in a perfect world.
Open source intelligence doesn't "[appear] less valuable than classified information because it does not carry the classification mystique", it is generally less valuable because of its unpredictability, poor information quality, and high susceptibility to subversion.
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Hell I knew 5 years ago the value of open source intelligence. Simply put the United States intelligence network would not function without open source information.
Think about it. Who hit the beaches of Somalia first? Not the Marines, CNN, who somehow got ahold of classified operational information and knew the location and time before most of the Marines did(that pissed off alot of the Marines there).
In the wake of 9/11, the first thing my intelligence officer did was set up a TV and turn on CNN. For that whole week that tv was running 24/7 on either CNN or MSNBC.
Open Source intelligence is nothing new... this article makes it seem revolutionary. Its not.
" And of course, people keep secrets to cover their a**'s. "
You can say the word. Ass.
I'm willing to bet you would cover yours in such a litigatious society, were hot coffee in the lap can get a company sued.
Thrithe-day is more like it.
"In light of the current conflict abroad and at home, I don't think making all this information available is necessarily a Good Thing (tm)."
The four questions one needs to answer when this "good thing"/not "good thing" shows up.
WHO will do the defining?
WERE will it be drawn?
WHY will they draw it, were it is drawn?
HOW LONG will this be going on?
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Show me That Smile (The Growing Pains Theme Song):
Show me that smile again.
Ooh show me that smile.
Don't waste another minute on your crying.
We're nowhere near the end.
We're nowhere near.
The best is ready to begin.
As long as we got each other
We got the world
Sitting right in our hands.
Baby rain or shine;
All the time.
We got each other
Sharing the laughter and love.
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from the article: I asked Steven Brown, the FAA official in charge of airspace, why Boston? Because the planes that hit New York took off there? He said, essentially, If you knew what we know, you'd understand. What he actually said was "The vulnerabilities in Boston, those known to the public and others, are unique." Until we do know what he knows, there's no choice but to take it on faith. Maybe this is where Dick Cheney has been.
I realize there are a lot of government jobs in the Big Dig...
Seriously, does anyone know what is so important about the Boston airspace?
Well, yes, but I think any presentation from the NSA will get these terms mixed up, due to no fault of their own.
From http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/faq.html:
By default, an NSA person would hear their own definition, not the programming community's definition. Related, but not the same thing.You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I was, of course, referring to the 'open source' definition you stated, but in certain contexts, they can be related, like when the government is showing off software and systems they are/will be implementing.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Half of the funds are spent in the way that neighbour associations decide in public debates. From the moment this model was adopted, the city has made spectacular progress in public infraestructures.
Porto Alegre has been chosen as the meeting point for the World Social Forum as an acknowledgement of its innovative democratic operation.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
A few percent of the world's gold is (or at least used to be, my information is about 12 years old)stored at the Federal Depository in Boston. A few Third World nations with hard currency keep the gold that backs their currency there.
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