(Forge Books) is about the turf wars between the Pentagon and the CIA and the privatization of national security.
The Director of National Intelligence' is hosting an Open Source Conference July 16-17 in DC about the value of open source intelligence. The Office for the DNI has recently demonstrated to the world true value of open source intelligence thanks to their unclassified PowerPoint presentation that allowed me to reverse-engineer the Intelligence Community budget with a mouse click and a simple algebra problem.
Ironically, the opening address by the Assistant Deputy DNI for Open Source is entitled, "Open Source: Finally Prime Time." It is unclear whether this will be a PowerPoint presentation.
It's good to see that the ODNI has finally found its niche and is sharing its expertise with the entire Intelligence Community.
May god help us.
That seems a little overly catty, Dr. Hillhouse. Get over yourself! Your posts are generally well-thought-out and useful, but ever since you caught that powerpoint boo-boo its all you can talk about. The ODNI's conference on open source looks like a positive step - why the attitude?
Posted by: Dave | June 20, 2007 at 08:58
Going to jail was a "positive step" for Paris Hilton- that doesn't change the fact that I wouldn't let her babysit.
Posted by: Tyler | June 20, 2007 at 11:01
Point is taken Dave, but lighten up a little and give me a break. (And note, catty is gender-specific. I have a problem with that.)
At the moment I'm burning the candle on every end I can find and running on fumes. An occasional laugh helps, as does a short and simple post.
As to what might seem egotistical, the reference to the PowerPoint budget, it was worked into it in a late edit, not for regular readers, but strays who find the site through Google, etc. who wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about otherwise. Same reason mention and link had to be in there in the one on Monday taking a closer look at the presentation and why one will be there in the final piece I'm doing looking at still some of the larger issues in the presentation.
Obviously I'm a big believer in open source, so from that aspect the conference is good. I'm also a big believer in irony!
RJH
Posted by: R J Hillhouse | June 20, 2007 at 11:25
Point taken, break given.
Posted by: Dave | June 20, 2007 at 12:37
There are a number of problems with Open Source intelligence, depending on how it's defined.
If it's based on the use of search engines, then you're dealing with only what's been indexed, a tiny fraction (the first 101k of a web page) of the 647 petabytes of data that the NSA estimates the Internet carries each day. Additionally, terrorist groups are web-savvy and use firewalls, encryption, the NoIndex metatag, spider traps, etc. to protect what they don't want discovered.
Forgive the plug, but my essay on this topic "Terror Web 2.0" is available for review at http://analysis.threatswatch.org/2007/06/terror-web-20/
Posted by: Jeff Carr | June 20, 2007 at 20:36
Jeff,
Interesting points and an interesting piece. Thanks for sharing.
Interestingly, I tried to find the original ODNI website in the internet archive (the Wayback Machine) to pull their original org chart, , but it seems the ODNI is also using NoIndex metatags. In contrast, the CIA, allows spiders and is fully indexed in the Wayback Machine.
It did strike me as unusual that they were taking measures to block archiving of a public web site. Probably the work of an over-zealous webmaster.
RJH
Posted by: R J Hillhouse | June 20, 2007 at 21:14