Jill Tracy is one of the few reasons why I regret not living in California.  She provides a comprehensive overview of her 2011 and a host of events I’m very sorry I wasn’t able to attend.

I’m looking forward to a couple of movies coming out soon.  I think I’ve mentioned them all but their release date is coming up.

The first is the Norwegian film Thale about a huldra.

The next is John Dies at the End which promises to be incredibly weird and fun.

Finally, a little further out, is a movie titled Fangs of War.  How’s this sound (hint: the answer is TOTALLY AWESOME!)?

The Nazi Supernatural Division has taken Castle Dracula and set up a secret lab there with one purpose and one purpose only: unlock the secret behind the legendary Count Dracula’s immortality.

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The Atlantic Council, however, makes an argument that we should be very interested in the NB-8 and it’s recent meeting in Lithuania for three reasons:

1. The rising importance of Germany in European affairs and a shift from an East-West European axis to a North-South one.
2. Energy politics and competition with Russia over the exploitation of oil and gas reserves
3. The melting of the ice cap which will allow year round transportation of goods and services (as well as more energy exploitation) which will be “nothing less than a revolution in strategic affairs and will turn the world on its head.”

In making their pitch for maintaining (nay, strengthening!) cross Atlantic cooperation, they state:

…the world will not just ‘pivot’ on Asia, it will also ‘pivot’ on the two High Norths of Continental North America and Europe; the new Super-Highways for the ‘Global Commons’.

Lunghu provides some interesting news from Finland.

First, Finland is going to go through some defense cuts and finds itself with an extra 100,000 ‘mint condition’ assault rifles.

Much more intriguing, however, is this story about the Arctic Sea (You haven’t forgotten so soon, have you?).

Investigators in the northern Russian port of Arkhangelsk have charged in absentia Estonia’s former spy chief, Eerik-Niiles Kross, with organizing the hijacking of the cargo ship Arctic Sea in 2009, a spokesman for the regional Investigative Committee, Yury Shperling said on Friday.

The Social Democrats were the dominate party in Sweden for decades.  Over the past few years we’ve seen a spectacular decline and collapse.  Just recently the head of the party resigned meaning the party will have four leaders in five years, hardly a sign of stability.  After decades of being the party that received the largest share of votes in the country it now is languishing with support of less than a quarter of Swedes.

Finally, while Mrs. TwShiloh is normally the even tempered embodiment of lagom, there was much gnashing of teeth at TwS HQ when it was announced that Ikea would no longer carry many beloved brands of Swedish food.  Well, expat Swedes around the world are rising in revolt and demanding blood (well, they’ve got a Facebook page).  All I know is that I better be able to get some crayfish for next year’s party…

“Politicians must be allowed to panic. They need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.”*

Recently I was talking with some managers of a poorly run intelligence shop and they were bemoaning the lack of ‘a sense of urgency’ among their analysts.  Why weren’t more ‘products’ being disseminated.  To bolster their argument they pointed to another group of analysts who were producing a much higher volume of documents.

Key to the discussion (but completely missed by my interlocutors) was that the two groups were charged with doing very different types of work.  The latter were charged with compiling and collating data. A lot of data, to be sure but data.  Very little to no analysis or domain knowledge was needed.  Provided you’re taught what information is required and what databases are available just about anyone should be able to complete that task.

The other group was charged with understanding a large number of subjects, being able to identify how events may impact on those subjects and understanding the context of changes within the operating environment.

I suggested that with a mission like that, perhaps an emphasis should be placed on developing subject matter expertise rather than counting the number of products with an agency seal on them.

Then I began thinking about how such expertise is developed.  In law enforcement (which is either where state and local analysts are located or they’re in agencies that are heavily influenced by such thinking) knowledge is usually transmitted in an apprentice like system.  You work with the seasoned veteran for years and learn the ropes  until, one day, you are teaching the new guy.

That certainly has value but is it appropriate when were talking about intelligence analysis?  How does a junior analyst become a subject matter expert in the workings of La Cosa Nostra or al-Qaeda?  Is it a wise use of time and resources to hope they pick it up around the office?

This is, I suspect, a fairly widespread problem where agencies that rushed to create intelligence shops lo these many years since 9/11 never really thought through how to run them or how to measure their success or failure.  So, more often then not we’re left with wholly unsatisfying, yet easily measurable metrics like how many products were disseminated this week or ‘Did we publish before our rivals?’. **

I haven’t heard of any agencies (again, at the sub-federal level) that have instituted a program for analysts to develop subject matter expertise but while it might require some up front work, it really shouldn’t be difficult to do.  There are plenty of training programs, open source publications and accessible experts that a decent analyst should be able to draft (and a good supervisor/mentor should be able to flesh out) a plan to build expertise while still being able to address the needs of the shop to which s/he is assigned.

I, however, won’t hold my breath for that to happen.

*I would lump a host of others in with politicians here but you get the idea

**The idea that the idea of ‘scooping’ other agencies in the production of (usually highly banal) ‘intelligence products’ is another symptom of a system that is adrift.  Especially when given the fact that the 24 news stations and the interwebs almost always ‘scoop’ even the quickest products out of these shops.

Well, it appears someone disagrees with me.  The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (which sounds like a total snoozefest) just put out a report titled Intelligence Information Sharing. I’m not going to pretend that I read the entire 227 pages of rock ‘em sock ‘em action but I did go through the section about fusion centers.

The fusion center model appears to be effective for law enforcement and first-responder engagement with State, regional, and local communities. The use of fusion centers for sharing intelligence information with the private sector varies dramatically across locations and sectors, but overall seems comparatively modest.

Not exactly a rousing endorsement considering fusion centers have sucked a lot of money from the federal teat* over the past decade.

Of 72 current fusion centers, eight are identified as success stores in infrastructure protection.

Feel safer?

Now, to be fair, this report focuses on information sharing with private sector entities as opposed to law enforcement.  Still, not the sort of thing you want to hear ten years into this thing but it shouldn’t be that surprising.   After all, it wasn’t until 201o that DHS conducted any sort of evaluation of fusion center capabilities and performance.

In a similar report (h/t Concurring Opinions) IT World summarizes a recent GAO report about DHS’s cyber-security guidance to the private sector.

DHS put together a single set of generic guidelines and sent those to companies in all seven market segments…Then it sent out the non-cybersecurity-specific security guidance to all seven segments….Then it sent even more non-specific cybersecurity guidance out.

Which led to…

… a mess of information that made it difficult for the security staffs who should have been able to use the guidance to even find the parts that were relevant to them.

The unspecific download swamped both the IT and non-IT security staffs in information that came from an agency important enough companies felt they had to deal with it, but useless enough that few companies could figure out a way the guidance could actually be useful.

The observation from that by Derek Bambauer over at Concurring Opinions is:

Much of this information is repetitive or simply wrong – as with the water pump report. Bad information can be worse than none at all: it distracts critical infrastructure operators, breeds mistrust, and consumes scarce security resources. The pendulum has swung too far the other way: from undersharing to oversharing. Finding the “just right” solution is impossible; this is a dynamic environment with constantly changing threats. But the government hasn’t yet made the effort to synthesize and analyze information before sounding the alarm. It must, or we will pay the price of either false alarms, or missed ones.

To all that I agree.  Too often (as I believe I’ve mentioned before) fusion centers (and the wider homeland security community) seem focused on staying in the echo chamber.  Summaries of what the 24 hour news channels both in terms of ‘analysis’ -ahem- AND subject matter are what dominate disseminated products that are completely redundant if you spend 30-45 minutes (and usually much less) reviewing a moderately comprehensive selection of world news.

Now, in the community’s** defense, there really isn’t much to encourage individuals or agencies to break the mold.  The safe money is on you (and your agency) keeping your head down and sticking to the party line.

*$327 million in direct funding and more than $800 million in more general funding according to Secretary Napolitano

**My standard disclaimer applies:  I’m talking sub-federal level here.

First you may have heard that last week New Zealand authorities, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice arrested the persons behind Megaupload.com and shuttered the site.

Within an hour or so of the DOJ’s press release the Anonymous hive mind sprang into action and began firing up the LOIC and forcing websites by the DOJ, MPAA, and a host of others offline.

Now, the attack itself isn’t that big of a deal practically.  It’s not like any of the affected organizations will have to stop conducting business just because their websites were overloaded with traffic and rendered inaccessible.  But…

This sort of thumb in your eye operation accomplishes one of Anonymous’ key goals of attracting attention.  In addition the timing AND subject of this action was very favorable for Anonymous.  Right on the heels of the SOPA battle, people concerned about internet freedom were primed for action and the DOJ handed it to them in an incredibly poorly timed operation.

Anonymous was able to begin mobilizing supporters to conduct DDOS attacks within minutes which is just amazing given this is a non-organizational movement.

And supporters?  Boy did they attract supporters.

The was downloaded most in the United States, Imperva said, at 7,328, followed by France and Brazil with about 4,000 downloads each. Germany and Spain rounded out the top five.

That’s in addition to one of Anonymous’ twitter feeds gathering 200,000 followers in a couple of days.  And I suspect lots of Megaupload users who suddenly find they can’t access their files (legit and illegit) might be upset and willing to cheer whoever takes a bit of revenge.

In addition, someone created a web-based version of the LOIC which allowed used to just click a link and thereby hand over a portion of their computer’s power to conduct DDOS attacks.  Some accused Anonymous of trickery and duping innocent people (the link didn’t indicate which users would get when they clicked the link) but I’m not so sure.  Assuming some person(s) did abuse Anonymous sympathizers with a trick like this AND users are so offended by being used in this way, it seems this would be a one shot operation and do damage to the ideas Anonymous wants to spread.

But, given that contributing to a DDOS attack is against the law and can result in jail time, I can’t help wondering if Anonymous is crazy like a fox here.  Have they just provided sympathizers with a way to participate in DDOS and also give a credible defense (reasonable doubt) that they had no idea what they were doing.  Certainly it would make proving such a charge more difficult since authorities would not just have to prove that a suspect participated in a DDOS attack but also that a reasonable person would have known that clicking an unmarked (or falsely marked) link was likely to make them an accomplice.

If that’s true we might be seeing the beginning of an evolution in hacking and hactivism.  I can certainly picture an arms race in which the authorities do what they can to make attacks like this illegal which Anonymous develops workarounds which allow users to maintain plausible deniability.

The second story involves Will Potter over at Green is the New Red.  Will is a writer and journalist with a definite point of view.  He’s very sympathetic to the animal rights movement (and was an activist for awhile) and writes about government actions which criminalize activists and label some terrorists.  I certainly don’t agree with everything Will writes but I’ve never seen him explicitly OR implicitly advocate violent or criminal activity.

So, it comes as a disappointment to see this post by Will in which he describes how he found out that his website was described as an “animal rights extremist website” by some US Attorneys in a sentencing memorandum against a Jordan Halliday.

I am not familiar with Halliday and so can make so comments on his guilt or innocence.  It appears that the Attorneys were quite sloppy here and cutting corners in order to make their case sound more compelling.  As Will puts it:

Prosecutors say that since my article mentioned Halliday in a photo caption, it means he placed himself “above the law” and violated an order to have “No association with animal group A.L.F., E.L.F., Vegan Straight Edge (VSE).” [The ALF and ELF are the underground Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. “Vegan Straight Edge” is a punk lifestyle, not a terrorist group…

I’d want to see some evidence that Potter is a known member of ALF or ELF, otherwise how can one say that Halliday violated the letter (or spirit) of the order?  Was the guy supposed to interpreted it so broadly that he shouldn’t have watched Animal Planet lest he saw someone being nice to an animal?

…pine needles are rich in Vitamin C, noting that people have used pine needle tea as a natural remedy for scurvy.

As an aside, I’ve made pine needle tea and it’s quite good.  You want to get the younger needles and use hot but not boiling water to steep the tea.  Too long in boiling water will extract the turpentine which you definitely don’t want.  The tea is pretty good and reported to be good for coughs and sore throats.  And scurvy.  You really don’t want to get scurvy.

But I digress…

As cool as this tradition is, it appears to be threatened.

“The fact of the matter is that we hardly accept any Christmas trees anymore, because, increasingly, they are treated with chemicals to make them last longer or to render them inflammable,”

Check out the photo essay of the animals enjoying their Christmas trees.  Pretty cool.

“Killing Iranian Scientists is Not Terrorism”

The argument (such as it is) revolves around the old idea that everything America does, by definition, is good and pure and Iran (and, I suppose the rest of the world as well) is evil and base.  Therefore killing foreign nationals isn’t a problem so long as it’s in our national interest.

And let’s be clear.  The killing of Iranian scientists, if done by (or by the direction of) a foreign power is an act of terrorism.  Just look at the FBI’s definition:

International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state. These acts appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.

So, let’s dispense with any nonsense discussion about whether this is terrorism or not.

This seems to have parallels between this and the Orwellian discussion about torture that’s seemed to have died down (but not resolved).  And in that vein, I’ll recommend this article from the Atlantic that does a little ‘compare and contrast’ between our ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and the Inquisition.

The Inquisition, with its stipulation that torture and interrogation not jeopardize life or cause irreparable harm, actually set a more rigorous standard than some proponents of torture insist on now…the Bush administration put forth a very narrow definition, arguing that for an action to be deemed torture, it must produce suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” To place this in perspective: the administration’s threshold for when an act of torture begins was the point at which the Inquisition stipulated that it must stop.

Nice…always a good sign when you can’t even come out on top of a moral comparison with a movement responsible for the death of thousands.

Dan Drezner tries to figure out what the recent assassinations and public statements by both the US and Israel mean.  He puts some weight behind the categorical denials by US spokespeople that there was no US involvement in the assassinations while Israel gives non-answer answers that only draw attention and suspicion to themselves.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US has warned Israel not to launch any sort of pre-emptive strike on Iran so make of that what you will.

What may be the real shocker of this story is the report that Israeli Mossad agents, posing as CIA agents, recruited Pakitani terrorists to carry out assassinations in Iran.

Sounds like a bad spy movie, right?  Well, give this a read (really, check out this story).  At the very least it deserves a close look.  There is some ‘good’ news here (well, everything is relative).  It looks like the administration doesn’t give Israel a total blank check.

Israel regularly proposes conducting covert operations targeting Iranians, but is just as regularly shut down, according to retired and current intelligence officers. “They come into the room and spread out their plans, and we just shake our heads,” one highly placed intelligence source said, “and we say to them — ‘Don’t even go there. The answer is no.’”

Look, I’m not some shmoe who thinks Iran is some great country and the big, bad U.S. of A is out to kill a bunch of innocent people just to fill the pockets of some robber barons (ok, well maybe that last part a bit).  But C’mon. We have time and every reason to believe that Iran is a rational actor.  That means even if they got a bomb the deterrent from Israel and/or the US would make an Iranian first strike highly unlikely.

But we’re not even at that point yet.  Sanctions continue to bite, there’s clearly domestic unrest and Iran has few real allies.   Let’s not push Iran from pressure to negotiate to backs against the wall and nothing to lose.

The Stop Online Privacy Act and Protect IP Act are bad bills that stifle the free flow of ideas that is the internet in order to further stuff the pockets of a bunch of robber barons.

So, please do us all a favor and contact your representative and senators and tell them to vote against these terrible bills.

Here’s some background…

Check it out.

Since I have experience in both fields I tried to take the quiz as quickly as possible to minimize the amount I could ‘game’ the system.  It still happened (there aren’t many mud walls like you see in Afghanistan here in the states and one or two of the photos got national attention and were recognizable) but I was only able to score 16 out of 21 correct.  That’s shocking given my time with the military and I’d have to assume that for citizens without that familiarity and forced to make a quick determination the distinctions would be almost impossible to make.

Forget about getting any real discussion about the pros and cons of creating police forces with military grade equipment in the U.S.  News that law enforcement deaths are on the increase will be seen as a reason to escalate (we need bigger guns! drones! tanks!) rather than reevaluate current methodologies.

The best comment on all of this was over at BoingBoing:

When I was a kid, the tough one was telling cops and postmen apart.

Indeed.

Well, provided you’ve got a stump of wood, a chainsaw (or wedge and hammer), some flammable material and a nice cast iron pan, EnglishRussia has the answer.

This is perhaps the coolest looking fieldcraft I’ve seen.  From this:

To this:

(I may give this a try once the weather isn’t so bitterly cold.  Stay tuned!)

And remember, we’re in this together…