In an interesting article, Jerry Brewer explains what is going on in the intel communities of Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba. The Colombian DAS recently revealed what are believed to be scandals of illegal spying on the political opposition, critics and journalists, as well as “interacting with left-wing guerillas, right-wing paramilitary, and smugglers.” President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted Cuba's DGI’s model and it is believed that there are around 50,000 Cuban nationals in Venezuela serving in “various official missions” in government, intelligence, security services and the armed forces. Venezuelan organized crime groups are known to include members and associates of the DGI, paramilitary, National Guard, and other Colombian criminals.
Says Brewer (and I totally concur) "What is needed with the DAS, as is the case with other democratic nations’ intelligence apparatus (read SA) is an intelligence model of sound oversight, quality control, and basic protocols of coherent and sound intelligence analysis. Too, an intense focus on sophisticated technology beyond satellite, signals, and imagery, dealing with human intelligence collection to facilitate verification protocols, source reliability, and content validity. This disciplined process would show reductions in serious duplication of effort, as well as enhance the oversight process.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Starlight: a sensemaking visualisation tool
I'm always on the look-out for technological tools that might assist analysts to make sense of vast, sometime ambigous information. Sufficient research has been done on the brain's preference for visual pictures. I'm quite excited about the application possibilities of Starlight Visual Information System. Starlight is being used in applications as diverse as counterterrorism, intelligence analysis, law enforcement, public safety, supply chain management, market research, computer forensics, and cybersecurity. Starlight enables you to derive value from large, heterogeneous information collections in two ways. The first is by helping you find particular items or sets of items that are germane to the problems you are trying to solve. The second is by helping you discover and understand important, anomalous, or otherwise meaningful relationships that exist among the items in your collections. Unlike traditional link analysis software, however, Starlight incorporates a broad range of integrated visualization capabilities into its design. In addition to standard network, timeline, and geospatial visualization capabilities Starlight includes tools for visualizing conceptual similarities among free-text content; hierarchical relationships among items; complex structured property relationships; and category memberships, among others.
Al Qaeda in South Africa?
Whether AQ is active in South Africa, remains rumours for us outside the intel fraternity. But I tend to re-examine my initial scepticism when it is reported that the US Embassy and other government buildings in SA have been evacuated for the second time in less than a month. The Weekend Argus reported that the US government had closed its embassy in Pretoria and all other US government facilities for two days last month because intelligence agencies had intercepted a call from Khayelitsha to the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab extremist group in Somalia, discussing a plot to blow up American interests in SA.
A scholar, Hussein Solomon (although he has been a bit discredited previously) made serious accusations about the readiness of the intel community in SA to counter any AQ activities. Says Solomon: " he had been trying to warn authorities for some time about the threat of terrorist action during the World Cup. He said international policing agency Interpol had already warned of such a threat but the South African intelligence services did not seem to be listening."Our intelligence services are extremely politicised," Solomon said, adding that they would rather spy on investigative journalists to discover their sources than spy on potential terrorists." Read more.
And the government's reaction here. The restructuring in the intel community might further impact on our readiness to counter the possibility of such attacks. Two issues that needs to be investigated is the credibility of sources, but also the trend of Somali expats (eg from the US) that are involved in terrorism which might be emerging in SA as well.
Recent developments in South Africa's intel fraternity
So, our Intel Induna was announced last week: Jeff Maqethuka was appointed as Director General (DG) of the State Security Agency, Mo Shaik as DG of SASS (foreign intel) and Gibson Njenje as DG of NIA (domestic intel). The minister made a few commitments regarding the restructuring and focus of the new SSA. Read this interesting and well-informed comment from one of our respected journalists. Also, see how many business interests all three have - Maqethuka (14), Njenje (30) and then Shaik of course still heading the infamous Nkobi Holdings of his convicted brother Shabir. The professonalisation of intelligence just got a new meaning - would like to shadow them and see where they get the time and energy to lead our all-important intel community and fulfil their management roles in all the different companies!? I struggle keeping ahead of all the admin & management of only 1!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
South Africa's own Intel InDuna
The mist is slowly lifting about what is discussed in the corridors of power and intel here in sunny SA. It seems we might be getting our own ODNI overseeing all intel activities. In the US they call him the "Intel Tzar". Wonder what the African equivalent would be? Intel Induna?
From Wikipedia: InDuna (plural: izinDuna) is a Zulu title meaning advisor, great leader, ambassador, headman, or commander of group of warriors. It can also mean spokesperson or mediator as the izinDuna often acted as a bridge between the people and the king. The title was reserved for senior officials appointed by the king or chief, and was awarded to individuals held in high esteem for their qualities of leadership, bravery or service to the community. The izinDuna would regularly gather for an indaba to discu
ss important issues. Amongst the Ndebele the term was also used to collectively refer to a group of elite soldiers operating under a specific inDuna. The term has found widespread use in South African English and Afrikaans, and it is a common reference to boss or lead person. In modern times the terms Chairperson and inDuna are sometimes used interchangeably.
There are rumours of the current 2 big agencies amalgamating 14 years after we went through the painful but relatively successful amalgamation of all liberation and state intel organs in the internal (NIA) and external (SASS). I'm sure there are a lot of intense debates about what to do with Mbeki loyalists, the Zuma loyalists and the few remaining intel professionals. O well, yet another restructuring, so don't hold your breaths for a sudden increase in competence or decisionmaking. If anyone needs to do a case study on the impact of perpetual restructuring on an organisation, just phone our Minister of Intel, or Defence or Police - you'd have more than enough material to keep you busy for 50 years!
From Wikipedia: InDuna (plural: izinDuna) is a Zulu title meaning advisor, great leader, ambassador, headman, or commander of group of warriors. It can also mean spokesperson or mediator as the izinDuna often acted as a bridge between the people and the king. The title was reserved for senior officials appointed by the king or chief, and was awarded to individuals held in high esteem for their qualities of leadership, bravery or service to the community. The izinDuna would regularly gather for an indaba to discu
ss important issues. Amongst the Ndebele the term was also used to collectively refer to a group of elite soldiers operating under a specific inDuna. The term has found widespread use in South African English and Afrikaans, and it is a common reference to boss or lead person. In modern times the terms Chairperson and inDuna are sometimes used interchangeably.There are rumours of the current 2 big agencies amalgamating 14 years after we went through the painful but relatively successful amalgamation of all liberation and state intel organs in the internal (NIA) and external (SASS). I'm sure there are a lot of intense debates about what to do with Mbeki loyalists, the Zuma loyalists and the few remaining intel professionals. O well, yet another restructuring, so don't hold your breaths for a sudden increase in competence or decisionmaking. If anyone needs to do a case study on the impact of perpetual restructuring on an organisation, just phone our Minister of Intel, or Defence or Police - you'd have more than enough material to keep you busy for 50 years!
The secrecy dilemma
I've been terribly busy the last few weeks, hence the silence. But, I try to stay up to date with what my co-bloggers say and do. I just love Travels with Shiloh - cynical,tongue-in-the-cheek and in-your-face realism about intel stuff, events and manipulations. Read here what he says about intel's preoccupation/fetish with classification. I'm taking a bit liberty here by copying hm verbatim:
"Yet, far too often, information that is either publicly available or of an entirely trival nature is festooned with some many security caveats that you’d think that it contained the nuclear launch codes.
I think there are three basic reasons for this, two of which are never stated when defending the current practice but which, I believe, exert a considerable force in preventing any real reform to the system.
1.The criminals will know what we know. By far, this is most often cited as the reason by information has to be classified. It assumes that criminals (and there is no distinction made about criminal groups with this argument, both the street level addict ripping off hubcaps for his next fix and the highly sophisticated international criminal network are viewed as equal here) are all conducting intense counter-intelligence operations with advanced collection plans and analysis of their own. In short, agencies argue that criminals are doing a better job of intelligence work than they are. The fact that such operations are exceedingly rare makes no matter. The fact that anyone has done such work anywhere means that we need to act as if everyone is doing it everywhere. This is where the judge’s quote comes into play. Just because you can conceive of a possible threat doesn’t mean that threat is likely. Life isn’t a Tom Clancy novel or an episode of ‘24′.
2.Look, ma! I’m important. Unfortunately, regional, state and local agencies have absorbed the lesson from the federal intelligence community that the only information that is worth looking at is information which is restricted in some way. In many cases this whole thing is a bit of a game since caveats like ‘Law enforcement sensitive’ are useless in their lack of clear definition and sanctions if violated. As a result, agencies put these restrictions on products no so much because of any harm which would result in the event of their unauthorized disclosure but as a badge designed to impart some authority on the product. It’s not uncommon to see media reports, copies at length without additional commentary labeled law enforcement sensitive for no reason other than a lazy and pathetic attempt to generate an aura of authority and expertise. Read more here
"Yet, far too often, information that is either publicly available or of an entirely trival nature is festooned with some many security caveats that you’d think that it contained the nuclear launch codes.
I think there are three basic reasons for this, two of which are never stated when defending the current practice but which, I believe, exert a considerable force in preventing any real reform to the system.
1.The criminals will know what we know. By far, this is most often cited as the reason by information has to be classified. It assumes that criminals (and there is no distinction made about criminal groups with this argument, both the street level addict ripping off hubcaps for his next fix and the highly sophisticated international criminal network are viewed as equal here) are all conducting intense counter-intelligence operations with advanced collection plans and analysis of their own. In short, agencies argue that criminals are doing a better job of intelligence work than they are. The fact that such operations are exceedingly rare makes no matter. The fact that anyone has done such work anywhere means that we need to act as if everyone is doing it everywhere. This is where the judge’s quote comes into play. Just because you can conceive of a possible threat doesn’t mean that threat is likely. Life isn’t a Tom Clancy novel or an episode of ‘24′.
2.Look, ma! I’m important. Unfortunately, regional, state and local agencies have absorbed the lesson from the federal intelligence community that the only information that is worth looking at is information which is restricted in some way. In many cases this whole thing is a bit of a game since caveats like ‘Law enforcement sensitive’ are useless in their lack of clear definition and sanctions if violated. As a result, agencies put these restrictions on products no so much because of any harm which would result in the event of their unauthorized disclosure but as a badge designed to impart some authority on the product. It’s not uncommon to see media reports, copies at length without additional commentary labeled law enforcement sensitive for no reason other than a lazy and pathetic attempt to generate an aura of authority and expertise. Read more here
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Intellipedia video
I've talked about the effectiveness of collaborative intelligence in the US intel community in previous posts. Here is the excellent video on Intellipedia and one on A-space. During a visit to ... last year, I was amazed to see the analysts, each with three monitors on their desks: one for Intellipedia and A-space, one for own organisation and one for internet data mining. Now, in Africa where slow dial-up is still a luxury, this is a far-off dream. Hey, but we're allowed to dream aren't we?
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