The irony of it all, is that with our current acquisition and property management cycle, the 4GW insurgents can actually buy superior items before we in the military can ever dream of fielding it.
And at a very small fraction of the cost.
The irony of it all, is that with our current acquisition and property management cycle, the 4GW insurgents can actually buy superior items before we in the military can ever dream of fielding it.
And at a very small fraction of the cost.
Morning Guys, I am at my day job so I can not do much. But I will post later, Bismarck glad to see you join in. I think your comments are dead on. Later
OK I am at home now and I have a couple of items to add.
1-I never saw an actual answer but yes a GPS phone would give your location in the situation you talked about.
2-LE has used what was known as a throw able GPS transmitter. They are not really throw able but can be dropped into a car trunk very easily, they are or were about the size of a brick. These can be found on the INTERNET and anybody with cash can get one or two or three.
3-Radios shack is a dreamland. macrt mentioned them earlier. They will call their engineering department and get an answer on how to do something and do it cheap. This is not just technical information they have actual engineers they will contact. They will usually tell you there is already an off the shelf item that will do what you want or with slight modification. Usually they have the stuff in the store or can get it easily.
Rob, I have some more but I will use a PM for that.
Originally Posted by 120mm
Some interesting things about communications
You can create a fully encrypted (256+ bit encryption) communication conduit that is not traceable by any current known means for less than $250 a unit using off the shelf parts. Using readily available wi-fi/cell phones that operate on VOIP networks you can configure some of them to use anonymizers to hide the location of the account holder completely. Thankfully the performance of the different anonymizers is so poor as to make them hard to use. Still high grade encryption and ubiquity of anonymous access points make them highly effective and access to the POTS is not required.
Of course when you start dealing with encrypted cell phones there are a variety of products available. In some respects these types of phones aren’t very expensive coming in at a few thousand dollars for the good versions. Also finding an operative on a cell tower is nearing instantaneous depending on the search method. Whether encryption is used or not simple triangulation allows for finding the cell phone based on the ESN as the billing entity needs that information.
A common method used by criminals (and dead beat dads but that is another story), is to buy several disposable cell phones using either illicit ID’s or at less than reputable dealers (can you say swap meet?). They will use the cell phones a few times and toss them. At $40 or $50 each it is an effective anti-tracing technique. Whether the NSA or other signals agencies have some super secret live voice analysis (you never know who does what on this web forum) of picking a drug dealer out of a million callers or not it is likely most domestic agencies do not.
Pervasive ubiquity and advanced encryption create an environment that on the surface would seem hopeless. These methods of communications could be used by drug dealers, terrorists, white collar criminals, and the average citizen worried about privacy. For law enforcement and intelligence gathering organizations it has to be realized early that the ubiquity of the data networks means the subject may have a faster, more secure, and robust network than a first responder may possess. Solutions don’t abound as most tracing technologies and interception technologies are dependent on end points and in most cases restricted by rule of law.
We're Losing the Infowar
From this week's Newsweek by Scott Johnson
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.
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??)
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.
Last edited by Rob Thornton; 01-08-2007 at 12:16 PM.
Hmmm...
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?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. Yea, I know, some buggerer from the ACLU woud start screaming, but how about if we did it from Canada (Marc, any thoughts??
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.
Gettin' down and dirty in cyberspace...
Hi Guys,
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:
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 consultingI 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".
Putting up local pages is a fantastic way to get this across. There's a few other things that can also work <evil grin>.
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??
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>.
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
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
"COPS" in Iraq
Dave, on a police website there was a report of a "COPS" like TV show that was being done in Kirkuk. The American adviser was a Col. Petrie USA. It included live video and a call in section where citizens could call in and complain or compliment. I have never seen the show and don't know if it is still up and running but that was an interesting Idea, because the Iraq population did not know they could complain and not be shot or put in prison. The Col. said that was the hardest part when they first started was to get people to understand that they live under different rules now.
2-What happened to the combat cameraman videos that were shown during WW2. Does the military still do something like this? Might want to bring that back to show the other side of the war as in showing things that are working not just bombs and bullets.
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