Last week while working on cyber attacks against media web sites I discovered some information I thought you might benefit from reading.
One of the more significant concerns with cyber warfare is a targeted attack against the news media. There are two different strategies that play here. The first possibility is a disruptive strategy -- where the cyber attack disables the media from reporting on activities and disrupting their ability to inform the public about events that are or have just taken place. The second strategy addresses the use of the media as a source of misinformation. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns are easily mounted and you can even find this tactic addressed in the well known work "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. We have assessed the implication of both of these scenarios using the Scenario Based Intelligence Analysis Tool created by Spy-Ops. The result of that analysis is below.
Scenario 1 - Media Disruption
An attack against the entire media sector in an attempt to disrupt its ability to communicate with and inform the public is rated a 2.3 on our risk scale.
Scenario 2 - Dis or mis Information
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.
In support of the higher risk and increased likelihood of success in this type of attack is the following account of events that took place on June 17, 2007. The viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts saw a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic. CNN Europe reported that members of a Czech art group were responsible and got in trouble for hacking a television broadcast and inserting the phony video of the nuclear explosion.
One can only imagine the psychological impact on the viewers that witnessed this prank. The TV channel CT2 said that they received frantic phone calls from viewers who thought a nuclear war had started. By the way, just recently the artists were acquitted of the charges stemming from the fake nuclear blast on TV.
In a conversation I had with a security consultant he told me: "Sure it could happen in the U.S. today. The media industry has not made the necessary security improvements since the Captain Midnight incident in the late 80s."
Congress' watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, is warning that the Pentagon needs to improve how it plans for and manages development of critical intelligence and surveillance systems.
In a report released April 23, the GAO said the military has struggled "to improve integration across DOD and national intelligence agencies" hampered by the widely differing missions and bureaucratic cultures of the intelligence agencies.
This is not an academic exercise. The report notes that the military plans to spend $28 billion over the next seven years to field a wide array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. That's just airborne systems and does not include spy satellites, with their traditionally hefty price tags.
The GAO report cites one example where the Pentagon "had difficulty obtaining complete information" on top secret "national" assets - usually a veiled reference to highly classified radar and electro-optical satellites - "because of security classifications of other agency documents." Also, budget wars have hampered the effort to improve coordination across the intelligence enterprise, the GAO report says. In classic understated fashion, the report says that "disagreements about equitable funding from each budget have led to program delays."
The Pentagon has drawn up an "ISR Integration Roadmap" but it does not appear to help much, if the report's language is parsed carefully. The roadmap does not "provide a long-term view of what capabilities are required to achieve strategic goals or provide detailed information that would make it useful as a basis for deciding among alternative investments."
The GAO reviewed 19 intelligence and reconnaissance systems proposals and found that 12 "sponsors" - this could be a combatant command, an intelligence agency or a service -- "did not complete assessments, and the completeness of the remaining seven sponsors' assessments varied." Perhaps most worrying, was the office's finding that the entity charged with overseeing these crucial decisions - the Battlespace Awareness Functional Capabilities Board -- "lacks adequate numbers of dedicated, skilled personnel to engage in early coordination with sponsors and to review sponsors' assessments."
The report's authors recommend that Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and James Clapper, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, to work together and develop "a comprehensive source of information on all ISR capabilities." Also, Gates should also put in place a monitoring process to make sure the capabilities board and those it works with do a better job. Finally, the report's authors say the capabilities board's staffing levels and their expertise should be reviewed.
-- Colin Clark
The Few . . . the Proud . . .
The Marines have always been good at delivering their message, and this commercial is another great example of that:
We now return to our regular programming. Semper Fidelis.
(Gouge: BT)
-- Ward
Does Airpower Create Insurgents?
In a recent op-ed in The Bulletin Charles Pena suggests that the American military's use of airpower is not helping us win the war. Here's the piece:
Operation Iraqi Freedom has rung in the new year with a bang - literally. On Jan. 10, U.S. warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, one of the largest air strikes of the Iraq war. This attack reflects the increased use of air power as a component of Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy (Gen. Petraeus is the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq and the primary author of FM 3-24, the Army's counterinsurgency manual). In 2007, the U.S. conducted more than 1,100 air strikes, a more than fivefold increase over the previous year.
The U.S. military's fascination with bombing is rooted in our competitive advantage in advanced technology.
The 1991 Gulf War saw the first widespread use of precision-guided munitions to destroy high-value targets (often deeply buried and hardened). Now ubiquitous in everyone's cars, the global positioning system was mated to dumb bombs to make them "smart" in Afghanistan, resulting in the venerable B-52 bomber (which has been in service in the U.S. Air Force since 1955) flying close air support missions at tens of thousands of feet altitude (usually directed by soldiers on the ground or the pre-set target coordinates). In Iraq, as guidance technology makes bombs more accurate, they are getting smaller - instead of 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound (or even smaller) bombs can be used to destroy targets with less likelihood of collateral damage. According to Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Iraq, the benefit of being able to use smaller bombs is that they can "take one building and not the whole block."
But the FM 3-24 counterinsurgency manual recognizes that "bombing, even with the most precise weapons, can cause unintended civilian casualties." Consequently, "an air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory." In other words, bombing is a proverbial Catch-22. Insurgents or terrorists may be killed, but no matter how much care is taken to avoid non-combatant casualties, innocent civilians may also be killed.
According to Wing Commander Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, "Even a 400-pound bomb has a wide area of blast and you are quite likely to kill some civilians. Kill a wife, children, mother or uncle and people become so angry the terrorist cycle starts all over again."
Such phenomenon was evident in Iraq very early on. In November 2003, after U.S. F-16 fighter jets dropped several 500-pound bombs in Fallujah, one resident remarked, "We used to have hopes of the Americans after they removed Saddam. We had liked them until this weekend. Why did they drop bombs near us and hurt and terrify my children like this?"
Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Yet this may be the case of increasing the use of air power in Iraq.
Even if civilians are not killed (the military claims that 35 al-Qaida militants were killed in the attack that dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs and that there were no civilian casualties), bombing results in destruction and devastation (the attack destroyed 25 homes and 13 vehicles). And the reality is that a bombed-out house is a bombed-out house - while the returning occupants may be happy to have al-Qaida out of the neighborhood, they may not be too happy about their house. The wake of such wreckage runs contrary to FM 3-24 and another important tenant of counterinsurgency: "Successful counterinsurgents support or develop local institutions with legitimacy and the ability to provide basic services, economic opportunity, public order, and security." So while bombing may be one solution to achieving security, it may also create setbacks to providing basic services and economic opportunity - and ultimately counterproductive to counterinsurgency.
Does airpower fly in the face of proper COIN doctrine, and is it actually causing setbacks as we work to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan?
(Gouge: WW)
-- Ward
Black Program Exposed?
Back in 1985, during my first airwing detachment to Fallon, Nevada, my squadron participated in an exercise called "Constant Peg." C-Peg was super classified and involved American fighter crews flying 1v1 ACM mission against Soviet fighters like MiG-23s and MiG-21s. These fighters were based at Tonopah. (My pilot and I went up against a MiG-23.)
Now during the briefs before the exercise the guys flying the MiGs were very hyper about us NOT landing at Tonopah . . . ever, ever, ever . . . even though the exercise took place just north of the field. "If you have an emergency go back to Fallon," was the refrain, which struck us as a bit excessive, even considering the fact these enemy airplanes were based there.
The squadron operations officer, who went on to be a corporate test pilot, said something that made sense years later: "They're not worried about the MiGs. There's something else going on there." When we pushed him for details, he said he didn't know. He just had a hunch that C-Peg was a cover for another program.
Well, we now know that other program was the F-117 developmental test program. And after seeing firsthand the V-22's DT program for three years, I can tell you that it's a miracle that nobody found out about the Stealth jet during that time. Incredible stories have emerged about long commutes and clueless families and night ops. They did have a couple of close calls. There were reports of UFOs by local civilians that were quashed by Air Force officials.
So, again, have the folks in Texas seen something the Air Force doesn't want them to see?
Check out these eyewitnesses in this news report. They seem convinced that they saw something weird:
-- Ward
Franks on the Take
The man Fiasco author Tom Ricks referred to as (I'm paraphrasing here) the worst tactician in modern military history is in the headlines for receiving a six-digit retainer from a veterans charity that only gives 25 percent of its income to the veterans it was set up to assist.
This from our friend Simon at ABC News:
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.
President Bush delivered a blow to California's whale and dolphin huggers today on behalf of the Navy. Here's the press release from DoD:
The Navy announced today that two important steps have been taken under existing law and regulations to allow it to conduct effective, integrated training with sonar off the coast of southern California after a federal court earlier this month imposed untenable restrictions on such training.
In accordance with the provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and at the recommendation of the Secretary of Commerce, the President concluded that continuing these vital exercises without the restrictions imposed by the district court is in the paramount interests of the United States. He signed an exemption from the requirements of the CZMA for the Navy's continued use of mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar in a series of exercises scheduled to take place off the coast of California through January 2009. The Navy already applies twenty-nine mitigation measures approved by federal environmental regulators when using active sonar, and these will remain in place.
An exemption from the act was sought after an order was issued on Jan. 3 by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which created a significant and unreasonable risk that the Navy will not be able to conduct effective sonar training necessary to certify strike groups for deployment in support of world-wide operational and combat activities. Use of sonar is part of critical, integrated training that must be done in the Navy's operating area off the coast of San Diego to take advantage of Southern California's bathymetric features and its extensive ranges, airfields, and other infrastructure necessary for effective training. Approximately half the Navy's fleet will receive its most critical, "graduate level" training here before it deploys its forces around the world.
In a separate but related action, the Council on Environmental Quality approved the Navy's request for alternative arrangements for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, for these exercises until completion of the Southern California Range Complex environmental impact statement.
Following up on these actions, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter signed a decision memorandum yesterday agreeing to those arrangements, which include adaptive management measures, more thorough reporting procedures, and increased public participation.
"We can protect our national security while simultaneously being good stewards of the environment," said Winter. "These alternative measures, in addition to the 29 protective measures already in place, will ensure our operating forces can train realistically without harming the environment."
"We are already taking extensive measures to protect marine mammals, and we have had positive results from those measures," said Winter. "We are furthermore committed to an extensive data collection effort to help inform our future efforts in this regard."
Even before the court's order, the Navy employed 29 protective measures, developed in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, any time sonar is used on Navy ranges, or in major exercises. The existing measures include, among other things, stationing specially trained lookouts to look for marine mammals, passive acoustic monitoring for marine mammals, establishing safety zones around ships where sonar power is reduced or shut down if marine mammals are sighted, and employing extra precautions during chokepoint exercises.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said that the actions were necessary in order to ensure the Navy's ability to train Sailors to detect quiet submarines that might threaten its ships.
"We cannot in good conscience send American men and women into potential trouble spots without adequate training to defend themselves," said Roughead.
"The southern California operating area provides unique training opportunities that are vital to preparing our forces, and the planned exercises cannot be postponed without impacting national security," said Roughead. "The steps that have been taken will allow our men and women to train realistically, while continuing the effective employment of proven mitigation measures that have been endorsed by the Council on Environmental Quality and our regulator, the National Marine Fisheries Service."
So has sanity prevaled here? Or is this another win for the evil empire running roughshod on the environment?
-- Ward
U.S. Watched Israeli Raid
Here's a little intrigue to wrap your head around while you're waiting for the turkey to cook. Dave Fulghum at Ares Weblog reports the following:
There are new details of Israeli's attack on Syria that suggests the U.S. had knowledge of the event and perhaps some back-channel involvement. The Pentagon was monitoring the electronic emissions coming from Syria during Israel's Sept. 6 attack and, while there was no active Pentagon engagement in the operation to destroy a nuclear reactor, there was advice provided, say military and aerospace industry officials.
I ran across an interesting study published by the RAND Corporation that took a look at how the United States could best leverage its current communications and intelligence networks to wage an effective information operations campaign in a counterinsurgency.
The study, aptly titled “Byting Back: Regaining Information Superiority Against 21st Century Insurgents,” takes a novel, “web 2.0” approach to the problem of gaining information to fight an insurgency. RAND rightly states that the information requirements for conventional war – the basis upon which most of the Pentagon’s intelligence apparatus is based – are very different from those of a counterinsurgency.
“If winning war requires understanding the terrain, winning counterinsurgency requires understanding the human terrain: the population, from its top-level political structure to the individual citizen. A thorough and current understanding of individuals and their community can help rally support of the government by allowing the government to meet the needs of the local population. Because insurgents do not identify themselves as such on sight, knowledge at the individual level is often what it takes to make such necessary distinctions.”
The study suggests utilizing local “wikis” compiled by the population, security services and government officials; leveraging cell phone networks to push information and to potentially track insurgents; incorporating the use of video and voice recorders on individual weapons to compile information and lessons learned and the institution of a detailed government census of the population.
The RAND analysts call this an integrated counterinsurgency operating network, or ICON.
Interestingly, the authors developed a metric of 160 information requirements in a counterinsurgency. From their analysis, the RAND authors found that only 13 of those bits of information required covert sources, while 90 could be obtained by troops on patrol and 57 come from the population itself. How do you think the military views this balance now? I betcha it’s weighted heavily toward the “covert operative” side of things.
What the RAND study also reveals is that the ICON benefits from openness.
“By contrast, security tended to be the least stringent desideratum. Only 2 requirements were of the sort that could not be shared with indigenous forces, while 28 could be shared with anyone.”
Though RAND admits the technologies to build such an intel network are well within reach, linking them together could pose significant challenges.
“In addition to designing and engineering work, DoD and leading IT firms will have to work together as they never have before to crack such problems as providing selective security in an open search-collaborative environment. With proper incentives, market forces will provide most of the drive needed. But an abundance of creativity and common purpose will also be needed.”
It seems to me, though, that all the tools are out there to do this. We don’t need ungainly weapons cameras developed by some billion dollar defense contractor, for example, when most cell phones come with one embedded in their wafer-thin mechanics. The key is to form a sort of intelligence “community” that interweaves these different streams into one easily accessible database...a counterinsurgency Myspace, maybe?
In a historic blogosphere first, President Bush sat down with a small group of military bloggers, including yours truly from Defense Tech. I've got to tell you, all politics aside, it was a very cool experience.
First disclaimer to hardcore traditional media zealots. This meeting didn't happen in the Press Room because it wasn't designed to be a press conference. It was a conversation and an opportunity for the president to demonstrate that he was aware of what the milbloggisphere is capable of. And certainly the meeting came about
because the staffers were convinced the assembled had shown themselves in writing to be pro-mission (or in my case pro-military), if not pro-administration.
We met with the president in the West Wing's Roosevelt Room, which is adjacent to the Oval Office. The president walked in without any fanfare and worked his way around the table, shaking hands and thanking folks for coming. He sat down at the head of the table and spoke for a time before opening up the floor for discussion. Here are some of the highlights from my notes. (Remember it's hard to write and maintain eye contact with the Commander-in-Chief):
"The question is will we do what it takes to defend ourselves?"
"We should be optimistic that freedom can take root in parts of the world where it's been written off."
"We need to change the conditions that cause 19 kids to get on planes to kill Americans."
"This strategy is my strategy."
"I'm defining a horizon of peace."
"I don't mind people attacking me . . . that's politics . . . but I do mind people impugning the integrity of our generals."
The questions started with Bill Roggio and Bill Ardolino, who were beaming into the room via VTC from Baghdad - a nice touch in support of milblog cred. John from Castle Argghhh! mentioned that his local lawmaker (a Democrat) in Kansas has awakened to the power of the blogoshere. Matt from Blackfive.net allowed that he had an embed headed for the Phillipines to join a special forces unit there, which caused the president to chuckle and opine to General Lute (the recently-appointed war czar), "Milbloggers in the Phillipines."
I was next. I started by telling President Bush that I had spent Tuesday morning watching the original 9-11 "Today Show" broadcast in real time and that the experience had left me, among other thoughts and emotions, wondering whether his petition to the nation had been strong enough in terms of calling citizens to duty. (You all remember the snippet made famous in "Farenheit 911" where he tells the nation to "go to Disneyworld.")
The president paused for a moment and then replied that he believed the nation had responded. "Volunteerism is up nationwide," he said. "I'm headed to Quantico after this meeting to speak to a group of Marine second lieutenants, men and women who are joining the fight in spite of what they hear in the polls."
About that time Chief-of-staff Josh Bolten poked his head in, a signal that told the president that Marine One was ready to go. "I want to show you all the Oval Office before I go, though," he said as he rose from his chair.
I queued up behind him as he opened the big door to the Oval Office, and I was reminded of when Dorothy entered Oz. The colors, the lighting, the history (good and bad) . . . it was a rush. The president gave me one of his signature "it's good to be king" expressions and quipped, "Pretty nice, huh?"
"Yessir, Mr. President. Pretty nice."
So we each had our photo taken in front of his desk (I had a vision of the classic Nixon/Elvis shot), and I moved across the room to talk to Tony Snow (it was his last day on the job) and Dana Perino (who's about five feet tall, max).
We finished our time with the Commander-in-Chief by ambling out to the Rose Garden and watching him get on Marine One for his flight to Quantico. He gave that same wave he always gives to the press corps and then paused at the top of the boarding ladder and waved back at us. As the helo flew out of sight somebody in the group spotted Barney, the First Dog. Bonus!
I will say, in general, at this meeting President Bush came off as more comfortable with the message than I've seen him appear on TV or in speeches. No deer-in-the-headlights stuff here. Truly unwaivering and passionate. He also grew very emotional as he made a linkage between his father's service in World War II and the fact that Japan is now an ally and then said, "I've had meetings with the prime minister of the country he fought." He actually teared up as he said that.
But my favorite quote came when he told us that he'd just finished reading three books about George Washington and his legacy. Again he gave that wry smile and said, "If they're still writing about the first guy then the forty-third guy doesn't have anything to worry about."
All in all, it was an amazing day for Defense Tech and one I'll never forget. In fact, I'd rank the event a close second to the time I sat in with Cheap Trick. It was that good.
So now please lecture me on how this isn't an appropriate post for Defense Tech and this site used to be so much better . . .
(Photo: Bill Roggio's view of the meeting through his VTC screen in Iraq. I'm on the far right. That's President Bush in the middle. Looks comfortable, don't he?)
Is he dead or alive? Is this guy on the tape an imposter? (Shades of the "Paul is Dead" hoax, huh?) And what's with the dye-job on the beard? Is he trolling? Maybe in his petition for Americans to turn to Islam he's really saying the opposite: "This cave life sucks! Who's up for a Hooters run?"
Somehow this doesn't surprise me, but for all the gnashing of teeth by the Army over the potential security threat of milblogs it turns out the real threat is official Army websites.
Defense Tech founder Noah Shachtman, who now runs the tres gouge Danger Room blog for Wired, is on the case as he has been since the beginning:
"For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do.
"The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period."
Got a great morning post item for DT fans sent to us by an alert reader yesterday. Unfortunately, other items nudged themselves in front of this one, but we thought we’d better get it out sooner rather than later.
I know there are a lot of Iraq war skeptics reading this, but if ever there was more solid proof that those who criticize Iraq war coverage by the world’s mainstream press just might have a point, I don’t know how better to distill it than with this picture...
It’s an Agence France Press photo taken by Wissam al-Okaili whose caption reads:
An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
Uh, huh...these bullets “hit her house” during the raid. Our readers can certainly understand how that couldn’t have been possible.
So why didn’t an editor catch this obvious error? We’ll let DT readers reach their own conclusions on that one. Obviously some of the reporters, photogs and their editors either need to go to “war coverage school” or have their own ideas on how to portray conflict to the rest of us.
(Gouge to DT reader JH)
UPDATE: From DT reader "Wembly"...
PS The Getty site now shows:
CORRECTS BULLETS TO UNSPENT An elderly Iraqi woman holds up two unspent bullets at her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, 14 August 2007. US and Iraqi troops carried out massive assaults against Shiite militants, killing four in Baghdad's volatile slum of Sadr City, and arresting several more across Iraq, the military said today. AFP PHOTO / WISSAM AL-OKAILI (Photo credit should read WISSAM AL-OKAILI/AFP/Getty Images)
Editor: Thanks for the new gouge, Wembley...
-- Christian
France Fears Blackberry Snooping by U.S.
(AP) PARIS - BlackBerry handhelds have been called addictive, invasive, wonderful - and now, a threat to French state secrets.
That, at least, is the fear of French government defense experts, who have advised against their use by officials in France's corridors of power, reportedly to avoid snooping by U.S. intelligence agencies.
"It's not a question of trust," French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. "We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it's economic war."
Le Monde newspaper, which broke the story, described BlackBerry withdrawal among those who have given them up. "We feel that we are wasting huge amounts of time, having to relearn how to work in the old way," the daily quoted a ministry office director as saying.
E-mails sent from "Le BlackBerry" pass through servers in the United States and Britain, and France fears that makes the system vulnerable to snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency, Le Monde reported. The company that makes BlackBerrys, however, denies such spying is possible.
Lasbordes, who was commissioned in 2005 by then-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to look into such issues, said he alerted the government to this "weakness" months ago. He said he met with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to discuss the problem in the course of preparing his report on the security of French information systems.
The Canadian company "admitted that there was a certain fragility in the protection of information when you use the e-mail system" and promised it would be resolved, said Lasbordes, adding: "That was more than a year ago."
BlackBerrys pose "a problem with the protection of information" and "the risks of interception are real," Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, told Le Monde.
Research In Motion insisted that BlackBerry e-mails cannot be read by the NSA or other organizations. The e-mails are more heavily encrypted than online banking Web sites, Research In Motion said in a statement.
"No one, including RIM, has the ability to view the content of any data communication sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution," the company said.
The BlackBerry system has been accredited by security agencies in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria and Canada, Research in Motion said, adding that a certification process is under way in the Netherlands and Germany.
In France, the circular on BlackBerries from the General Secretariat for National Defense applies in theory to all ministries, and "it's up to everyone to be responsible," Lasbordes said.
Another official in a major ministry who got rid of his BlackBerry following the order said authorities are looking at other types of hand-held computers to use instead.
The prime minister's office would not confirm that it and the presidential palace were included in the circular, as Le Monde reported. But a spokesman, Severin Naudet, cited the General Secretariat for National Defense as saying that no type of hand-held computer is risk-free.
"It's not a problem if you're writing to your mother-in-law," Lasbordes said. But "one can imagine a minister coming from a meeting of the G-8 or G-7, et cetera, or a meeting in Brussels, and he sends information to his colleagues. It goes via Canada and the United States and that's it, game over."
Suspicion goes both ways. At a Group of Eight summit in Germany this month, White House aides were instructed to leave their wireless e-mail devices behind, apparently for fear of Russian eavesdropping.
According to AP, Paris Hilton recently said, "I was shocked to see all the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media would focus on more important things like the men and women serving our country in Iraq and other places around the world."
A New Meaning to "Old Ironsides," Perhaps? (Updated)
The U.S. Navy’s official news service recently reported that Vice Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, Director Navy Staff, relieved Cmdr. Thomas C. Graves of command of the USS Constitution because of “a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command.”
Now “a loss of trust and confidence” is a euphemism for any number of things the Navy (or any organization worried about its reputation) would rather not have in the public eye. Sometimes it actually has something to do with a commander’s warfighting ability, but in this case it’s safe to assume it’s – ahem – something else. Besides a ceremonial spin around Boston Harbor in 1997, the over two century’s old Constitution has been welded to the pier since 1934. The frigate’s cannons were last fired in anger in 1815 1854.
So let’s just say one has to do something pretty stupid to lose a superior’s trust and confidence when one’s command is a tourist attraction. We’d hate to prejudge, of course, but for some reason the expression “Friggin’ in the riggin’” comes to mind.
(Updated, 140 EDT, May 17) - Navy Times reports that sources familiar with the incident said that Graves allegedly struck an enlisted member of his crew with a stack of paperwork.
Which, of course, is different that what we previously insinuated in terms of what he used to "strike" a member of his crew.
In its perennial effort to restrict the kinds of information available to America’s enemies in the wide open Internet world, the Army has issued an updated policy on what qualifies as “operational security” and how the service may restrict the release of such data.
Since as early as 2005, the Army – and, to a lesser extent, other services – has been battling the proliferation of weblogs, or “blogs,” authored by service members often on deployment. Army public affairs and intelligence specialists have been worried that the freewheeling nature of blogs risks divulging certain details of attacks and vulnerabilities that could aid insurgents, who they say scan the internet for tidbits to help in their attacks.
The new Army regulation further defines what qualifies under the “operational security” guidelines and appoints an Army Web Risk Assessment cell to execute a quarterly examination of personal Web sites, releases from family readiness sites, non-government unit pages, blogs as well as .mil sites.
The new regs were first reported by former DT editor Noah Shachtman who now writes for Wired magazine.
The opsec rules preclude bloggers from writing about or posting pictures or videos:
Do not publicly disseminate, or publish photographs displaying critical or sensitive information. Examples include but are not limited to Improvised Explosive Device (IED) strikes, battle scenes, casualties, destroyed or damaged equipment, personnel killed in action (KIA), both friendly and adversary, and the protective measures of military facilities.
The funny thing is the public affairs office in Iraq has already gotten into the “new media” world, airing its own YouTube videos of attacks against enemy positions like this one…
And this one…
It’s been a constant struggle for the services to balance the rights of free speech with the genuine need to keep information useful to the enemy out of his hands – especially in the electronic media world. The updated regulations give a lot of leeway to unit commanders to regulate the information flow from their soldiers, but one has to wonder whether superiors will err on the side of caution and ban out of hand all blogs authored by troops on deployment.
So far, only a handful of so-called “Milbloggers” have been disciplined for their posts, with one of the best known cases revolving around Spec. Colby Buzzell, whose blog “My War” was shut down a few years ago after his postings gained momentum in the mainstream media and irked his commanders.
Buzzell parlayed his success into a book deal, but others who are caught in the opsec net may not be so fortunate.
The new Army order also covers personal emails, which have always been flagged by commanders who see the risks of compromising information, as well as discussion board entries.
Consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum.
(1) This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation.
It remains to be seen how intensively the Army will investigate these postings for opsec violations which would take a tremendous amount of manpower considering the over 130,000 troops deployed to Iraq alone.
The breezes through the corridors of the "five-sided wind tunnel" are gusting this morning with the news that names of prominent Pentagon officials and defense experts may be among the 15,000 on Deborah Jeane Palfrey's list.
"The tentacles of this matter reach far, wide and high into the echelons of power in the United States," the "DC Madam" wrote in a court filing last month. Unsubstantiated reports allege that senior defense officials and a high-ranking principal from a conservative think tank are on Palfrey's list.
The Associated Press reports that Palfrey ran her business from 1993 to 2006 catering to upscale clients in and around the Beltway. Her roster of escorts was 130 strong, ranging in age from 23 to 55. One advertisement she ran read, "Best selection and availability before 9 pm each evening." No doubt!
According to the report, clients paid $300 for 90 minutes of discreet (well, not so much) "high-end erotic fantasy service." (No word on an "ugly early" discount, but it seems like a natural, doesn't it?)
The scandal has already snared boutique warfare specialist Harlan Ullman and Undersecretary of State Randal Tobias, who claimed he had nothing more than massages from the women who visited him.
So, dear DT readers, it's analogy time: Paying a high-end erotic fantasy service associate for a "regular" massage is like . . . what? Help us out.
Best one (as judged by the DT staff) wins recognition in the next "The People's Site" posting.
-- Ward
I'm a Manipulative Hack...
Perhaps I can finally put up a post everyone can agree on (yeah, right), and especially on a day like today when I get comments like this…
Unreal. You sir, will never qualify for "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"
…Or this one…
You and Rumsfeld should enjoy a martini together.
If this article wasn't free to read, I'd cancel my subscription today. Not because of your opinion, but because you possess no expertise in the field in which you report on.
Alright, here you go guys: Journalists (like me) suck…
So says a new report from the Joan Sorenson Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University – though not in such pedestrian terms.
In a thorough analysis of media coverage during the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah war (which I covered from Cyprus and Beirut for the Military Times newspapers and USA Today), media sage - and no friend to its critics on the “right” - Marvin Kalb paints a disturbing picture of media bias, manipulation and outright advocacy for the Hezbollah cause.
I remember telling my colleagues back home that from my perspective at the US Embassy in Beirut, you couldn’t tell there was a war going on at all. Life continued as normal on the streets and civilians went about their daily business unencumbered. There was no smoke rising from the hills, no explosions, no panic. My observations fell on deaf ears, most suspecting I was a right-wing, Israel-loving nut.
The exhaustive Harvard study calls into question the rapid assertion by Human Rights Watch that the Israeli military committed war crimes and the media’s reluctance to hold Hezbollah to account for its own criminal behavior. The various instances of doctored photos (such as the above Reuters photo) and exaggerated casualty claims are mere sideshows to the outright failure to adhere to the journalistic mantra of balanced coverage without editorializing opinion.
Because Hezbollah functioned as a quasi-military force within its populace, protecting it, feeding it, housing it, and in general caring for its needs, the Israelis were quickly accused of hitting civilian targets with an indiscriminate callousness amounting to war crimes.
On August 3, Human Rights Watch specifically accused Israel of war crimes. Few seemed to note that before the war, on May 27, Nasrallah had actually—and publicly—embraced the guerrilla tactic of hiding soldiers among civilians. “[Hezbollah fighters] live in their houses, in their schools, in their churches, in their fields, in their farms and in their factories,” he said, adding, “You can’t destroy them in the same way you would destroy an army.”
By war’s end, it was clear that Nasrallah was right. Hezbollah, though severely wounded, remained a fighting force in defiant objection to all U.N. resolutions calling for it to be disarmed.
Israel defended its military operations by citing two relevant articles in international law: using civilians for military cover was a war crime, and any target with soldiers hiding among civilians was considered a legitimate military target. Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, framed her government’s argument in cold language. “When you go to sleep with a missile, “ she told The New York Times, “you might find yourself waking up to another kind of missile.”
Israel’s defense, though, fell on deaf ears, not only among diplomats but also reporters, as daily evidence mounted of civilian deaths. Hezbollah, whenever possible, pointed reporters to civilian deaths among Lebanese, a helpful gesture with heavy propaganda implications. Early in the war, reporters routinely noted that Hezbollah had started the war, and its casualties were a logical consequence of war. But after the first week such references were either dropped or downplayed, leaving the widespread impression that Israel was a loose cannon shooting at anything that moved.
There’s also a disturbing passage about possible complicity by the United Nations in Hezbollah’s many deadly ambushes of Israeli troops.
UNIFIL was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It consisted of roughly 2,000 troops stationed along the Lebanese-Israeli border from 1978 until the end of the 2006 war. Its mandate required “full impartiality and objectivity.”
During the war, it published information on its official website about Israeli troop movements, information that in military circles might well be regarded as “actionable intelligence.”
Take, for instance, its posting of July 25, 2006:
“Yesterday and during last night, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north towards Bint Jubayl and south towards Yarun.”
Or, its posting of July 24, which disclosed that IDF forces stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were “significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers.”
It was part of UNIFIL’s responsibility to report violations of the ceasefire, including troop movements, to the U.N., but presumably this information was to be conveyed through confidential channels, not on the Internet, where the information in wartime could be as valuable as hard, military intelligence suddenly exposed to the light.
These postings, similar to others during the war, coincided with heavy fighting in the region. Israeli units came under severe Hezbollah attack.
It is impossible for outsiders to know whether Hezbollah used the information provided by UNIFIL, which was available to anyone with a laptop, or whether Hezbollah depended primarily upon information provided by loyal local supporters. However, no UNIFIL posting during the war contained any specific information relating to Hezbollah’s military movements, perhaps because they were not visible to UNIFIL or perhaps because UNIFIL did not choose to see the movements.
Frida Ghitis at World Politics Watch has an outstanding write up on the report. She points out the increasing role media coverage plays in a non-state strategy of asymmetric warfare.
Before long, Hezbollah had achieved a definitive propaganda victory. The media had not only acquiesced to tell Hezbollah's version of the war, they had started contributing to the creation of the narrative, with at least one Reuters photographer altering photographs to make Israeli attacks look more damaging. And many reporters simply failed to offer much context. The study quotes the New York Times' Stephen Erlanger commenting on a satellite picture published by his paper. The picture showed a southern suburb of Beirut, which was largely destroyed. Erlanger said it "bothered me a great deal," because the image with no context failed to show that this was a small part of a Beirut, and the rest of the city was largely undamaged by the war.
The Harvard paper shows the need for journalists to brace themselves and remain vigilant when they cover conflicts between open societies on one side, and media-controlling militias on the other. These conflicts, which we will undoubtedly continue to see, demand that journalists make a greater effort to provide context and to keep from become willing collaborators with one side. Islamic militant groups, such as al-Qaida and others, have openly described their strategy of manipulating the media and winning on the "information battlefield." Hezbollah, too, had a well crafted, and ultimately successful media plan.
In an open society, ground rules may be announced, but they are not likely to be observed or enforced. During the 2006 summertime war in the Middle East, it was Israel versus Hezbollah, led by the charismatic Hassan Nasrallah, and because Israel did not win the war, it is judged to have lost. In Iraq, in the not too distant future, it may well be the United States versus the Mahdi Army, led by the equally charismatic Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr. The challenge for responsible journalists covering asymmetrical warfare, especially in this age of the Internet, is new, awesome and frightening.
"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late.
"Accordingly , I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact."
All typos are bad. Some are real bad. To wit (from a DefenseLink press release):
Raytheon Co., Tucson, Ariz., was awarded a $23,700,000 cost-reimbursement contract on Mar. 2, 2007, to procure long lead material in support of the FY07 production of Evolved Seasparrow Missiles (ESSM) for NATO Seasparrow Consortium countries and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. Raytheon Co. will procure long lead material used in FY07 ESSM production for Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Norway, Spain, United States, and the United Arab Emigrants. Work will be performed in Australia (26 percent); The Netherlands (25 percent); Spain (19 percent); Tucson, Ariz. (12 percent); Norway (6 percent); Greece (4 percent); Germany (4 percent); Canada (2 percent); Denmark (1 percent); and Turkey (1 percent), and is expected to be completed by Feb. 2010. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The contract also supports the United Arab Emigrants under the FMS program. The contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-07-C-5431).
(Editor's note: This no kidding is a press release that was sent to the Defense Tech offices.)
18DoughtyStreet.com, Britain’s first political web tv station, has launched a two minute viral campaign to combat growing anti-Americanism across Britain and Europe.
The two minute campaign that has been posted on YouTube and is being distributed across Britain via email paints a world that would be less free, less healthy and less prosperous if America had never existed.
Through five fictional news reports from the 1950s onwards it portrays a world dominated by Soviet Russia and warns that much of the world’s prosperity and medical advances would have been lost.
18DoughtyStreet.com is the initiative of internet entrepreneur Stephan Shakespeare and a number of Britain’s most-read bloggers who have come together to challenge the biases of establishment broadcasters and mainstream parties.
Tim Montgomerie, Director of 18DoughtyStreet.com, said, “For much of the last fifty years Europe has benefited from America’s security umbrella and from the dynamism of American enterprise and science. The advert ends by suggesting that if the US-led coalition had not intervened in Iraq the world could now be being held to ransom by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.”
The text of the advertisement is here:
Opening caption: “Imagine a world without America.”
SCENE 1: 1950s STUDIO WITH MAN IN DINNER SUIT
Caption: 1959
“You are watching the News from London. General Secretary Stalin was in France today to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Paris by the Red Army. Organised crowds of young people sang the Soviet anthem as troops marched down the Champs Elysees . . .”
Caption: A World Without America . . . Would Be A World With Less Freedom
SCENE 2: 1960s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN FLOWER POWER SUIT
Caption: 1969
“Latest data from the British Department of Health show that deaths from polio rose again last year. The hunt for a vaccine continues. . .”
Caption: A World Without America… Would Be A World Without Many Medical Advances
SCENE 3: 1970s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN LARGE LAPELED BROWN SUIT
Caption: 1979
“Tonight the Mediterranean Sea is full of boats of Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives. Earlier in the day the poorly-equipped and under-funded Israeli army was finally defeated and Arab combined forces – with Soviet air cover - entered Tel Aviv. . .”
Caption: A World Without America… Would Be A World Without Israel
SCENE 4: 1980s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN SHOULDER-PADDED POWER SUIT
Caption: 1989
“Arriving at today’s hunger summit in her ministerial Lady Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher vowed to work with Austrian President Arnold Schwarzenegger in fighting increasing hunger across Asia. . .”
Caption: A World Without America. . . Would Be A Poorer World
SCENE 5: TURN-OF-THE CENTURY STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN NEWSROUND-TYPE OPEN SHIRT AND JEANS
Caption: 1999
“At a Downing Street press conference earlier today the British Prime Minister said that President Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with. He was speaking after it was confirmed that the Revolutionary Republic of Iraq and Kuwait had acquired nuclear weapons. . .”
Caption: A World Without America. . . Would Be A World Held To Ransom By Tyrants
CLOSING SEQUENCE
In the final sequence a whole series of words and phrases appear on the screen and then disappear. . . at first slowly and then fast. . .
A free Afghanistan
40 percent of the world’s R&D
Free Taiwan
Nylon
Elvis Presley
Air conditioning
Marshall Plan
South Korea
Democratic Nicaragua
Typewriter
A free Japan
Protection of world trading routes
Jazz
50 percent of the world food programme
The motorcar
The liberation of the Falklands
Berlin Airlift
The bra
Frozen food
Dishwasher
Denim jeans
$15bn HIV/AIDS programme
FM radio
Coca Cola
Free Haiti
Supercomputer
26 percent of global aid spending
Final message on screen with atlas of world without USA as image:
A WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA
A world with more disease, more poverty, more danger.
Sponsored by BritainAndAmerica.com
(Editor's endnote: Wow, we'd better get on the step and make a list of things we should thank Europe for. I'll start:
1. Pissing off our forefathers so bad that they came to America.
That doggone liberal mainstream press is up to it again, labeling the plan Tony Blair introduced today as a "withdrawal." Thank goodness Vice President Cheney collared ABC's Jonathan Karl before the correspondent got to the airwaves and added to the proliferation of bad skinny.
"I look at it, and what I see is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well," Cheney said.
The digital rights crusaders over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Department of Defense, "demanding expedited information on how the Army monitors soldiers' blogs," according to an EFF statement.
EFF filed its suit after the Department of Defense and Army failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about the blog monitoring program...
According to news reports[ahem, ahem], an Army unit called the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC) reviews hundreds of thousands of websites every month, notifying webmasters and bloggers when it sees information it finds inappropriate. Some bloggers have told reporters that they have cut back on their posts or shut down their sites altogether because of the activities of the AWRAC.
Well, not exactly. Most of the bloggers I've talked to dialed back their sites because of a more broad suspicion about blogging within the military community -- and unclear regulations about what can and can not be written online.
Still, the EFF's suit should be useful. Because the AWRAC's blog-eying regimen seemed almost laughably loose, when it was announced in October. The Army team "uses several scanning tools to monitor [these] sites for OPSEC [operational security] violations," the Army notes. "The tools search for such key words as 'for official use only' or 'top secret,' and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation."
The most common OPSEC violations found on official sites are For Official Use Only (FOUO) documents and limited distribution documents, as well as home addresses, birthdates and home phone numbers.
Unofficial blogs often show pictures with sensitive information in the background, including classified documents, entrances to camps or weapons. One Soldier showed his ammo belt, on which the tracer pattern was easily identifiable.
The EFF's suit "demands records on how the AWRAC conducts its monitoring, as well as any orders to soldiers about revision or deletion of web posts. It also demands expedited processing, as the information is urgently needed by the public."
"Of course, a military effort requires some level of secrecy. But the public has a right to know if the Army is silencing soldiers' opinions as well. That's why the Department of Defense must release information on how this program works without delay," EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann said.
"Any U.S. military surge in Iraq will be far more than a troop increase," Aviation Week says, in a fascinating new article. "A key element in the deployment will be an accelerated effort to bring more and newer technologies to bear on the foe, in part by targeting insurgent commanders, often through their communication networks."
But perhaps the most intriguing family of systems being "readied for operations" is BAE Systems' Suter network exploitation programs, designed to "break into enemy networks to hear communications, see what enemy sensors are seeing and, in some circumstances, become the systems manager with the ability to manipulate enemy sensors."
"Suter finds the doors that have to be opened," an Air Force official tells Aviation Week.
L-3 Communications' Network-Centric Collaborative Targeting tool is considered Suter's "eyes and ears." With the system, three planes can pick up, within seconds, "the location (within a few hundred feet) and identity of enemy emitters -- radios, low-power cell phones and satellite phones, as well as other devices used for command and control and detonation of explosives... Plans are to have UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] or manned aircraft nearby that can deliver weapons or guide ground teams to the emitter's location within minutes."
A series of Suter programs explored the ability to pipe data streams -- embedded with specialized algorithms -- into enemy communications networks without being detected. The portals into the network are found by precisely locating antennas (as aiming points for the data streams) whether they are part of an air defense system or a hand-held communications device linked to others in an ad hoc tactical network for a small insurgent team.
However, there's the possibility that [the new gear] could interfere with [existing] U.S. [military] technology. Baghdad, where the force buildup is expected, is electronically polluted. For example, one smart system that jammed improvised explosive devices locked onto another smart system because of a lack of coordination between electronic warfare systems operated by different services and agencies. Jammers also can conflict with surveillance and communication systems... The problem is so pervasive that antennas have been put on 110-ft.-high poles to get them out of the worst interference.
Still, I have a feeling this story, from the Telegraph, is a little over-blown.
Terrorists attacking British bases in Basra are using aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth internet tool to pinpoint their attacks, say Army intelligence sources.
Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google.
The satellite photographs show in detail the buildings inside the bases and vulnerable areas such as tented accommodation, lavatory blocks and where lightly armoured Land Rovers are parked.
Written on the back of one set of photographs taken of the Shatt al Arab Hotel, headquarters for the 1,000 men of the Staffordshire Regiment battle group, officers found the camp's precise longitude and latitude.
"This is evidence as far as we are concerned for planning terrorist attacks," said an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group. "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?... We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas such as tents."
As the paper notes, "it is unclear how old the maps are." But unless they're very recent, it's hard to believe they'd show today's tents all that accurately.
Newsweek has a must-read story on something we've hammered on againandagain here at Defense Tech HQ: the American military's inability to get its message out in any sort of sensible way. Especially through new media.
A draft report recently produced by the Baghdad embassy's director of strategic communications Ginger Cruz... makes the stakes clear: "Without popular support from US population, there is the risk that troops will be pulled back ... " Under the heading DOMESTIC MESSAGES, Cruz goes on to recommend 16 themes to reinforce with the American public, several of which Bush is likely to hit: "vitally important we succeed"; "actively working on new approaches"; "there are no quick or easy answers."
What's even more telling is that the IRAQI MESSAGES—the very next sec
The digital rights crusaders over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are 
A third squadron of 
While the Pentagon