Intelligence post-Snowden: a debate
Moderator's Note
After a year of Snowden inspired revelations (or a calculated info operation) it is time to merge related threads into this one and re-name it. It was We are all honorary Muslims now" with PRISM? and now becomes 'Intelligence post-Snowden: a debate' (ends).
I dont know if Snowden got his own thread yet, but my first thoughts were:
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In a way this whole scandal is good news. A bugging operation that was supposedly paying this genius 200000 dollars a year does not speak well of the brilliance of our digital overlords… it hints that the whole thing is more a money-making scam for contractors than a terrible danger to humanity (i have no doubt that the people training him included bloodthirsty idiots, but look where that got them). Meanwhile the great hero of democracy, freedom and V for Vendetta escaped, of all places, to the People’s Republic of China (special administrative region Hong Kong); doesnt speak well of our heroic digital rebels either. Its all good in the proverbial long run. Satyameva Jayate as our Hindu brothers would say…Panopticon is coming, but as a Muslim who has fully expected everything i say or do on the internet to be “known” to the NSA since 2001, I think 12 years is long enough to determine that its not the end of the world…
“We are all honorary Muslims now”. And it ain't necessarily fatal.
Link:http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/06/...#comment-67610
"We are all honorary Muslims now" with PRISM?
Created as a new thread, after Omar posted the first post elsewhere. The title is adapted from his post.
Needless to say SWJ Blog Daily Update has several links to articles:http://smallwarsjournal.com/node/14161
We always thought they were listening to us back then too....
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When I was a kid, India was the bad country because it was pro-Soviet and we used to joke that people were listening to our conversations back then!
- From my comment to the following SWJ article:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...m-in-naglandia
People used to joke about this but it may have been a little serious, too. Back then, because of the crappy phones in India you'd here weird noises in the background and call at odd hours and hear clicking noises.... :)
PS: I'm a little more concerned than Omar but that's more about the thinking of the class that put this in place.
Putting focus on Paul Revere - and Joseph Warren
You don't have to have Irish ancestry to do this - though it may help - Kieran Healy, Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere (9 Jun 2013):
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London, 1772.
I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects. This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”. I will show how we can use this “metadata” to find key persons involved in terrorist groups operating within the Colonies at the present time. I shall also endeavour to show how these methods work in what might be called a relational manner.
...
What a nice picture! The analytical engine has arranged everyone neatly, picking out clusters of individuals and also showing both peripheral individuals and—more intriguingly—people who seem to bridge various groups in ways that might perhaps be relevant to national security. Look at that person right in the middle there. Zoom in if you wish. He seems to bridge several groups in an unusual (though perhaps not unique) way. His name is Paul Revere.
...
So, there you have it. From a table of membership in different groups we have gotten a picture of a kind of social network between individuals, a sense of the degree of connection between organizations, and some strong hints of who the key players are in this world. And all this—all of it!—from the merest sliver of metadata about a single modality of relationship between people. I do not wish to overstep the remit of my memorandum but I must ask you to imagine what might be possible if we were but able to collect information on very many more people, and also synthesize information from different kinds of ties between people! For the simple methods I have described are quite generalizable in these ways, and their capability only becomes more apparent as the size and scope of the information they are given increases. We would not need to know what was being whispered between individuals, only that they were connected in various ways. The analytical engine would do the rest! I daresay the shape of the real structure of social relations would emerge from our calculations gradually, first in outline only, but eventually with ever-increasing clarity and, at last, in beautiful detail—like a great, silent ship coming out of the gray New England fog.
Thus, a "1772" crystal ball, three years before "Different Experiences and Ideologies" collided at the Bridge. ;)
Presenting the evidence in truly scientific form requires a "Han" - Shin-Kap Han, The Other Ride of Paul Revere (2009):
Quote:
Notwithstanding the celebrated tale of his “Midnight Ride,” Paul Revere’s role in the complex of events leading up to the American Revolution remains rather obscure. The few who have delved into this gap in the historical narrative suggest that Revere’s real importance is not to be found in that one spectacular exploit (Countryman 1985; Fischer 1994; Forbes 1942; Triber 1998). What then was his importance, if any? In other words, if Revere was more than a messenger who just happened upon the assignment to ride to Lexington on that fateful night of April 18-19, 1775, and if he indeed had “an uncanny genius for being at the center of events” (Fischer 1994: xv), what exactly was the role he played? Joseph Warren, known mostly as the man who sent Revere on that ride, presents a similar quandary (Cary 1961; Truax 1968). What was his role? Also, what was his relationship with Revere in the context of the incipient movement?
Using the membership rosters of key Whig groups and supplementary secondary data, I address these questions by examining the underlying relational structure that created opportunities for Revere and Warren in the mobilization process. The analysis shows that Paul Revere’s genius was in his being a bridge par excellence. The role Joseph Warren played was of the same kind, welding the movement as a whole. Both men were bridges that spanned the various social chasms and connected disparate organizational elements, helping to forge an emerging movement that gave rise to the American Revolution. The effectiveness of the brokerage they provided in linking the microlevel interactions to the macrolevel mobilization was due mainly to the fact that the network they were embedded in was highly multiplex, and the positions they occupied in it were singularly instrumental. Moreover, they complemented each other as structural doubles. This is the other ride of Paul Revere and Joseph Warren—far less known, yet, I argue, much more crucial.
Just saying: back to the future.
Regrads
Mike
Slap's One Minute Street Cop Analysis
The whole Snowden things stinks worse than dead Pig in the Sunshine! This whole mess is following the plot of a true espionage story called the "The Falcon and The Snowman" Link below for some backround info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falcon_and_the_Snowman