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The Cell Phone/Web Page effect
I started to post this on the Saddam’s Execution thread because the use of the cell phone & the internet to reach a broad audience jumped out at me, but it seemed like it belonged in a different category.
Remember everybody preaching the "CNN Effect" at the CTCs just last year? Networked camera/video cell phones are everywhere over here. Our guys are using them, their guys are using them (although their guys are better at it then our guys). They are far cheaper and more available then back in the States. $200 here a very capable tri-band video cell phone and you get what would cost $500-$700 back home. The network for sending stuff is close (and remarkably cheap)
A little bit of movie maker savvy, or Adobe photo shop, access to you tube, or a well connected hub and your message gets out. Where it goes from there is anybody's bet.
It beats the pants off of a state sponsored media, or even profit driven media - no QA /QC, but it grabs the initial impression.
Just about everybody over here is a collector - its just a question of who they are collecting for and why they are doing it.
There is an IO fight at the low tactical levels, capture the right image and get it to a site that has allot of links, and it will get out. Very smart to post to the web first – it goes to the audience its really targeting in a very private manner – with little to no adult supervision or peer context competition. The cable TV/major mainstream media outlet must also then consider to carry it, even if its late – it will still get some ratings from the older crowd who get their news primarily from FOX/Al Jazeera/CNN/BBC and the like.
Not every bad guy over here carries a RPG or detonates an IED. Was that cell phone video of Saddam supposed to be covert? Maybe. Maybe he was lowering his hand so he could get a glass of chai. It could be that there are several cell phone videos out there - it would not surprise me. You bring somebody to a meeting here and an American pulls out a Sony Cybershot camera- the Iraqi will pull out a very slick Nokia - in this environment who has the better tech?
I'm attaching a proposal I sent up through the CoC. Guess what - its not something I came up with - the IA did - they just can't resource it to the degree I think would get the most out of LTIOV info (although they do share video at weekly meetings) - hence I asked for $$$ (in a pretty .ppt form). Guess what else - they say this is nothing new, the bad guys are already doing it, and are resourced better then our guys.
I also want to pass on a great read I picked up as a ref. from a T.X. Hammes article - "Linked: The New Science of Networks" by Albert'Laszlo Barabasi will teach you allot about networks and the Internet. I don't know if Kilcullen had included the Internet in his "know your turf" statement, but the enemy is using it as a psychological mobility corridor.
Links to cell phone vulnerabilities
Jedburgh - I think its a rotational thing - call it a groundhog shaped bell curve:rolleyes:
I went googling for stuff along the lines of what Slapout had discussed. 2 sites stuck out the first is about cell phone vulnerabilities, the second is about how make them vulnerable.
I also looked for some stuff on VOIP since that is a growing medium.
Reading how easy it is convinces me the bad guys are ahead of us in yet another area:mad:
Cell phones and techno-cultural vulnerabilities
Hi Rob,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
Jedburgh - I think its a rotational thing - call it a groundhog shaped bell curve:rolleyes:
But just think about all the really cool changes that could be made to pre-deployment training! Nokia would love it -new phone fashions :eek:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
Reading how easy it is convinces me the bad guys are ahead of us in yet another area:mad:
Well, to my mind this just means that it's time for the US to go back to an old tradition of giving some "criminals" the option of going to jail or joining the forces. Think about it....
Judge: Son, you've been found guilty of phone phreakin'. That's a 5 year stretch at Attica. But, since it's your first offense, I'll give you an option...
On another note, I just finished reading your proposal. It's simple, straight forward, workable and to the point. I really think it would work which is why I suspect that it would never get accepted by the military bureaucracy. If you get a run around with getting it implemented, try sending the proposal out to RadioShack.
Marc
Would you believe a shooting cell phone
I knew about this some years ago know it is on, well go to the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FaIEJSYwIs
Book Suggestion for this topic
A Legal And Law Enforcement Guide To Telephony: Addressing Technical, Legal And Police Issues Relating To The Interface And Interaction With Communication Service Providers (Hardcover) by George Mulczan is a good tutorial on Telecommunications written in a simple enough format for non IT types. I am almost positive that it goes into VOIP technology as well as the POTS networks. The one review on amazon.com doesn't do the book enough justice for the amount of useful information it provides.
Dopers are placing GPS enabled cell phones with their "packages." They are not only getting a cheap surreptitious listening device but one that can be tracked.
Blue Force Tracker / FedEx tracker on the cheap?
Bismark,
Could this mean that when the carrier of cell phone X gets pinched, his boss knows the location he is being held?? Man does that ever fit - everybody see where I'm going? The utility of cell phone trumps again. Over here its not unusual for guys to carry multiple phones, a smart guy might have one configured to specific modes. A clever guy (and there are many a clever bad guy with some minor resources- so I'm thinking its already a fact since they are out there and receiving aid from clever guys with lots of resources) could make this work pretty easy. The "to do" list with such things could be lengthy. This one is going to make my head hurt, but I'll pitch it to my smart IA Intel guys and see what they can up with - it might also explain some things that have been bothering me.
Thanks - Rob
Gettin' down and dirty in cyberspace...
Hi Guys,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
I'd have to agree with everything I read there. I've pitched the idea that the ISF should start standing up their own webpages - maybe you have a ISF Mosul, or a IA or IP Mosul where videos shot of ISF victories are posted. You could even address rumors by putting out the latest info - you'd have to be slick though, and you'd have to hire the right guys. Why, because the guy going up against your site could be anyone, anywhere in the world.
Personally, think that that would be an excellent idea. When I was reading Kilcullen's email that was posted in another thread, one thing he said really popped for me:
Quote:
I sometimes feel as if a new paradigm is on the tip of my tongue, and I have a strong feeling that the solution (if there is one) is about a strategic form of armed propaganda that goes well beyond our current concept of IO into a type of semi-kinetic "influence operations".
What really resonated for me was that what he seems to be seeing is what I am trying to see with all the stuff I'm talking about with symbolic warfare. In some ways it goes back to "what are we selling?". Well, certainly in Iraq at the moment, we are trying to sell a fairly simple idea - security is better than chaos. But, as anyone in marketing will tell you, you've got to get the message out to the potential customers (darn, maybe I've been doing to much market research consulting :D ).
Putting up local pages is a fantastic way to get this across. There's a few other things that can also work <evil grin>.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
CF types are not real keen on it though, and even if they are, they are not sure how to do it. This is something where we could take a page out of the badguy's book. We take the video, email it to the team(s) back in FT Livingroom and they turn and maintain a product that gets our message out - another team also stationed at FT Livingroom could be attacking the badguy sites - or manipulating their message. Hell, you coud even set up decoy sites, copy cat sites where you post messages as them (Marc mentioned something like this in another post or in an email). There are an infiniite number of ways to inject doubt into the badguy's message while getting ours out. With the power of state sponsored apparatuses, we can certianly focus mass more easily for cyber attacks - look at China's training program. Its really just a question of resoucing it. Yea, I know, some buggerer from the ACLU woud start screaming, but how about if we did it from Canada (Marc, any thoughts??:D )
:D Well, I'm not sure how useful the "state sponsored apparatuses" would be. Personally, I think that they would just be co-opted by the politics of the moment. As far as the ACLU is concerned, I actually think that they would be a great ally in this type of campaign <truly evil grin>. Look at it this way, globally, one of the core cultural values that we are selling is the idea of civilized disagreement - i.e. that it is just wrong to snuff everyone who disagrees with you. This is one of the ACLU's core values as well, so there is a potential alliance here.
As for running this from Canada, that's certainly a possibility <g>. There are some very interesting, below the surface trends starting to show up here. Anyway, I think it would be best to run it globally as well as locally.
On the truly nasty tactics that we could use, I'd really prefer not to make suggestions on an open board <evil grin>.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
I am serious though about getting smart on Information Warfare, its not just about collecting info, its about information dominance that includes you getting your message out and attacking his - the politicians should have no problem with this one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SWJED
Food for thought and maybe some type of action we can take from the SWJ / SWC livingroom - any ideas out there on how to make this happen - if indeed we should?
I certainly think that the SWJ / SWC livingroom should be one site in it (it already bis anyway). But let's, for a second, go back to Kilcullen's ideas of a distributed global system: the key would be to get multiple sites involved using the same logic that created the 'net in the first place.
Dave/Bill, what would you think about starting a "best of" page for something like ISF Mosul?
Marc