As a guy who knows a thing or two about warning systems, I watched again with dismay the misuse and abuse of the homeland security advisory system today. Granted, it isn’t really a “warning” system per se, but the general concept is the same: give people a quick way to assess the threat. The problem…

This by Evan Kohlmann on the CT Blog yesterday 8/9: Participants on key Arabic-language Al-Qaida chat forums on the Internet have announced their intent to launch collective cyberterrorist attacks tomorrow, August 10, aimed at interrupting or denying service to other pro-Israeli websites–namely the “Internet Haganah” cyberterror watchdog site run by Aaron Weisburd. […] . .…

What a day to sleep in. Some quick hits before I descend into the seventh level of teleconference hell: In the words of Secretary Chertoff this latest plot is “suggestive” of al-Qaida because it is essentially a dusting off of the plans for Operation Bojinka; funded by al-Qaida and put together by two guys whose…

. . . about everything covered in the MSM – especially war – is suspect. Some of you didn’t need confirmation, but since I have a nice side-bar going with former info ops colleagues a post seemed appropriate. Army of Analysts Experts people, Army of Experts . . .

It is so easy to get worked up over pieces like this after reading a piece like this. I have watched so many sharing efforts come and go, each purporting to do what the previous efforts were unable to do. Technology is usually a major factor in each effort, but as the second article points…

A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion. According to the…

There is something unseemly about breaking the risk of terrorism down into a numbers game, but when you have to make decisions about finite funds and resources there is no avoiding it. Having said that I think the author (pdf) has done a fine job pointing out both the cold mathematical facts as well as…

A very readable piece on reform, arguing for more centralization wrt CT issues, in Foreign Policy: Policymakers’ perceptions of intelligence also posed a problem. “There still is widespread misunderstanding of what intelligence is, how it is produced, and in what way it relates to and serves the action and policymaking people,” Smith wrote in his…

The intrepid Siobhan Gorman strikes again: The National Security Agency is running out of juice. The demand for electricity to operate its expanding intelligence systems has left the high-tech eavesdropping agency on the verge of exceeding its power supply, the lifeblood of its sprawling 350-acre Fort Meade headquarters, according to current and former intelligence officials.…

The process is so shrouded in secrecy that one member of Congress … said he did not even know lawmakers were allowed to read the classified sections of the bills. “How in the world do you expect me to maintain my world-class level of ignorance if I have to waste time fulfilling my responsibilities?“