At that time, intel­li­gence was awak­en­ing to the Inter­net, the ulti­mate open source. %���� For a guy who nev­er shuts up about net­work­ing, he should get that there is noth­ing “mys­ti­cal” about such a notion. “At the mas­sive agency lev­el, if I had to ask, ‘Do we need blue giz­mos?’ the only per­son I could ask was the per­son whose job secu­ri­ty depend­ed on there being more blue giz­mos.”. You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. The sci­en­tif­ic method is straight­for­ward. There were, he said, thou­sands of unlinked, inter­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed oper­at­ing sys­tems inside the NSA, inca­pable of exchang­ing infor­ma­tion with one anoth­er. While Hay­den spoke, the 200 or so high-rank­ing intel­li­gence offi­cials in the audi­ence sat with their arms fold­ed defen­sive­ly across their chests. We offer Ms. Sun­der­son­’s obser­va­tions, stress­ing that Bar­low’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions inher­ent in social media and his pres­ence at CIA head­quar­ters (by invi­ta­tion!) “Why Spy?” by John Per­ry Bar­low; Forbes; 10/07/02. And it comes with strings attached. Now we have to do that same task in the infor­ma­tion age, and we find our­selves less adept,” he said. Thanks to the vig­or­ous inter­ven­tions of the Clin­ton White House, the cult of secre­cy remained unmo­lest­ed. The U.S. has just tak­en its worst hit from the out­side since 1941. stream . But I think we can deal with that prob­lem when we’re lucky enough to have it. You become more pow­er­ful based on your capac­i­ty to know things that no one else does. But the cul­tur­al ter­ror of releas­ing any­thing of val­ue remains. As one gen­er­al put it, “I don’t want infor­ma­tion that requires three secu­ri­ty offi­cers and a safe to move it in around the bat­tle­field.”. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, peo­ple who work there believe that job secu­ri­ty and pow­er are defined by the amount of infor­ma­tion one can stop from mov­ing. I then watched a Strangelov­ian spec­ta­cle when, dur­ing my talk, many arms crept up to cross invol­un­tar­i­ly and were thrust back down to their sides by force of embar­rassed will. How then, can the insti­tu­tion­al sum add up to so much less than the parts? This method has worked fab­u­lous­ly well for 500 years. And for ser­vice like this we are pay­ing between $30 bil­lion and $50 bil­lion a year. It is not uncom­mon at all to see kids of spooks fol­low­ing in the fam­i­ly pro­fes­sion. Lis­ten­er Tiffany Sun­der­son con­tributed an arti­cle in the “Com­ments” sec­tion that brings to the fore some inter­est­ing ques­tions about Bar­low, the CIA and the very gen­e­sis of social media. The financ­ing of the Mel­lon-Leary col­lab­o­ra­tion was effect­ed through the Cas­tle Bank, a Caribbean oper­a­tion that was deeply involved in the laun­der­ing of CIA drug mon­ey. http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/1007/042_print.html. But while OSINT may be a time­ly notion, it’s not pop­u­lar in a cul­ture where the phrase “infor­ma­tion is pow­er” means some­thing bru­tal­ly con­crete and where sources are “owned.”. .”, For our pur­pos­es, his most note­wor­thy pro­fes­sion­al under­tak­ing is his found­ing of the EFF–The Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Email to friends Share on Facebook - opens in a new window or tab Share on Twitter - opens in a new window or tab Share on Pinterest - opens in a new window or tab I didn’t expect a warm recep­tion, but it wasn’t as if I was inter­view­ing for a job. Know­ing that it’s like­ly to occur may be suf­fi­cient. /op false /ca 1 The coun­ter­pro­duc­tive infor­ma­tion hoard­ing, the tech­no­log­i­cal back­ward­ness, the unac­count­abil­i­ty, the moral lax­i­ty, the sus­pi­cion of pub­lic infor­ma­tion, the arro­gance, the xeno­pho­bia (and result­ing lack of cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic sophis­ti­ca­tion), the risk aver­sion, the recruit­ing homo­gene­ity, the inward-direct­ed­ness, the pref­er­ence for data acqui­si­tion over infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion, and the use­less­ness of what is dis­sem­i­nat­ed-all are the nat­ur­al, and now ful­ly mature, whelps of bureau­cra­cy and secre­cy. In May 2000, I began to under­stand what they were up against. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. (Record­ed April 26, 1987). Much of what they get is too undi­gest­ed and volu­mi­nous to be use­ful to some­one already suf­fer­ing from infor­ma­tion over­load. In fact, few­er than 10% of the mil­lions of satel­lite pho­tographs tak­en have ever been seen by any­body. They seemed eager, in their undemon­stra­tive way, to pur­sue these issues fur­ther. Check out his Wikipedia page, bear­ing in mind strong CIA input into Wikipedia. I was intro­duced to this world by a for­mer spy named Robert Steele, who called me in the fall of 1992 and asked me to speak at a Wash­ing­ton con­fer­ence that would be “attend­ed pri­mar­i­ly by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als.” Steele seemed inter­est­ing, if unset­tling. We explained to them how easy it would be to have two net­works, one con­nect­ed to the Inter­net for gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion from open sources and a sep­a­rate intranet, one that would remain ded­i­cat­ed to clas­si­fied data. The recipe for a nuclear bomb has been gen­er­al­ly avail­able since 1978, when John Aris­to­tle Phillips pub­lished plans in The Pro­gres­sive. They sealed us into an elec­tron­i­cal­ly impen­e­tra­ble room to dis­cuss the rad­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty that a good first step in lift­ing their black­out would be for the CIA to put up a Web site”. Indeed, in 1994, one high­ly placed White House staffer told me that their incom­pre­hen­si­ble cryp­to poli­cies arose from being “afraid of the NSA.”. The Moyni­han Com­mis­sion released a with­er­ing report charg­ing intel­li­gence agen­cies with exces­sive clas­si­fi­ca­tion and cit­ing a long list of adverse con­se­quences rang­ing from pub­lic dis­trust to con­cealed (and there­fore irre­me­di­a­ble) orga­ni­za­tion­al fail­ures. After mov­ing to the West Coast, Leary hooked up with a group of ex-surfers, the Broth­er­hood of Eter­nal Love. It’s the nature of bureau­cra­cies to crush com­pe­ti­tion. If you are con­nect­ed to the inter­net, you are not tru­ly secure. LinkedIn. They base their rep­u­ta­tions on their abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute their con­clu­sions rather than the abil­i­ty to con­ceal them. I just don’t know about the Lau­rel Canyon scene, in the final analy­sis. I would not auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­clude that the pop stars in the Lau­rel Canyon mode were oper­a­tives and/or assets from the fact of their fam­i­ly lin­eage, which I do not dis­pute. This dog­ma of secre­cy is prob­a­bly the most per­sis­tent­ly dam­ag­ing fall­out from “the Sovi­et fac­tor” at the CIA and else­where in the intel­li­gence “com­mu­ni­ty.” Our spooks stared so long at what Churchill called “a mys­tery sur­round­ed by a rid­dle wrapped in an enig­ma,” they became one them­selves. It might be worth a try in the field of intel­li­gence. Sev­er­al of the dif­fer­ent intel­li­gence-reform com­mis­sions that have been con­vened since 1949 have called for con­sol­i­dat­ing bud­getary author­i­ty under the DCI, but it has nev­er hap­pened. The sur­prise attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon were only the most recent over­sight dis­as­ters. >> How can we expect the CIA and FBI to share infor­ma­tion with each oth­er when they’re dis­in­clined to share it with­in their own orga­ni­za­tions? Some kids do diverge from the path­way of their prog­en­i­tors. Their short­com­ings go back 50 years, when they were still pre­sum­ably effi­cient but some­how failed to detect sev­er­al mil­lion Chi­nese mil­i­tary “vol­un­teers” head­ing south into Korea. Among them was Paul Wall­ner, the CIA’s open source coor­di­na­tor. You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE. Now [our ene­mies] have access to state-of-the-art….In 40 years the world went from 5,000 stand-alone com­put­ers, many of which we owned, to 420 mil­lion com­put­ers, many of which are bet­ter than ours.”. After near­ly two decades of ser­vice in the shad­ows, Steele emerged with a lust for light and a belief in what he calls, in char­ac­ter­is­tic spook-speak, OSINT, or open source intel­li­gence. But they lacked the force to dom­i­nate their wily sub­or­di­nates. Can you pro­vide a link and/or print­ed ref­er­ence to the alle­ga­tion you have pre­sent­ed? 762 talking about this. The direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence (DCI) is sup­posed to be in charge of all the func­tions of intel­li­gence. “Giv­en our basic mis­sion,” one ana­lyst said weari­ly, “we’d do bet­ter to study epis­te­mol­o­gy than mis­sile emplace­ments.”. /Filter /FlateDecode “Every­thing the agency does had been pushed down into the components…it’s all being man­aged sev­er­al lev­els below me.” In oth­er words, the NSA had devel­oped an immune sys­tem against exter­nal inter­ven­tion. They are ded­i­cat­ed and thought­ful. was def­i­nite­ly NOT shobo­gen­zo-wor­thy. Near­ly all of these accounts have expressed aston­ish­ment at the appar­ent incom­pe­tence of America’s watch­dogs. /BM /Normal I’ve always had spooky feel­ings about Cerf, Dyson, and Kapor. Bureau­cra­cies nat­u­ral­ly use secre­cy to immu­nize them­selves against hos­tile inves­ti­ga­tion, from with­out or with­in. They hat­ed their prim­i­tive tech­nol­o­gy. This next part SCREAMS of intel’s ties to the “social media explo­sion.” I think this pas­sage is what qual­i­fies Barlow’s arti­cle as a his­tor­i­cal doc of some val­ue. While the guy who runs comes off as anti-Semit­ic, (and I def­i­nite­ly don’t agree with him on that point and a few oth­ers), he does go into detail on how LSD actu­al­ly works. It would rely heav­i­ly on the Inter­net, pub­lic media, the aca­d­e­m­ic press, and an infor­mal world­wide net­work of volunteers–a kind of glob­al Neigh­bor­hood Watch–that would sub­mit on-the-ground reports. First, it does not address the press­ing need to reestab­lish clan­des­tine human intel­li­gence. I’m aston­ished that anyone’s aston­ished. The NSA was also, by his account, as tech­no­log­i­cal­ly mal­adroit as its rival in Lan­g­ley. The whole hip­pie/­counter-cul­ture man­i­fes­ta­tion WAS a damned “op,” how­ev­er. ... a Caribbean oper­a­tion that was deeply involved in the laun­der­ing of CIA drug mon­ey. Wall­ner want­ed to know if I would be will­ing to drop by, have a look around, and dis­cuss my ideas with a few folks. Download full-text PDF . Direct elec­tron­ic con­tact between him and the con­sumers of his information–namely the Pres­i­dent and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty staff–was vir­tu­al­ly nil. If you believe it will cause hal­lu­ci­na­tions, then you will have them. http://www.hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=243. Lat­er, Leary’s LSD pros­e­ly­ti­za­tion was great­ly aid­ed by William Mel­lon Hitch­cock, a mem­ber of the pow­er­ful Mel­lon fam­i­ly. Get the insider's guide to exploring the real Caribbean. In fact, he has con­trol over less than 15% of the total bud­get, direct­ing only the CIA. Hay­den rec­og­nized the impor­tance of get­ting over the Cold War. The oth­er prob­lem is the “Sat­urn” dilem­ma. But of these, the only one with any oper­a­tional force–a require­ment that a pub­lic-inter­est declas­si­fi­ca­tion board be estab­lished to advise the Admin­is­tra­tion in these mat­ters-has nev­er been imple­ment­ed. Beside each of them was a tele­type, chat­ter­ing in upper­case. . Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er, George Wal­lace vot­er, invit­ed to CIA head­quar­ters in ’92 to held with their tech ops, founder of the EFF–very sup­port­ive of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook Snow­den (the peach-fuzz fas­cist) and Julian “Alt-Right” Assange (who played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the ele­va­tion of the Trumpenkampfver­bande, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Roger Stone)–all of this sug­gests that Bar­low was, and is, an oper­a­tive. << And they were delight­ed when I returned lat­er, bring­ing with me a pla­toon of Inter­net gurus, includ­ing Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkows­ki, and Vint Cerf. Ever read ‘Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon’ by David McGowan. Reddit. Yet we are still pro­tect­ed by agen­cies geared to gaz­ing on a sin­gle, cen­tral­ized threat, using meth­ods that opti­mize obfus­ca­tion. Its bud­get would be under the direct author­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent, act­ing through the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er. They didn’t see how this would be pos­si­ble with­out com­pro­mis­ing their secu­ri­ty. After a decade of both fight­ing with and con­sult­ing to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, I’ve con­clud­ed that the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence sys­tem is bro­ken beyond repair, self-pro­tec­tive beyond reform, and per­ma­nent­ly fix­at­ed on a world that no longer exists. After 40 years, we are at par­i­ty in nuclear sci­ence, where­as, thanks to our open sys­tem in the study of elec­tron­ics, we are decades ahead of the Rus­sians.”. LIBRO - Medical Parasitology (Abhay Satoskar) sug­gest that Bar­low not only has strong ties to CIA but may have been involved in the con­cep­tu­al gen­e­sis that spawned CIA-con­nect­ed enti­ties such as Face­book: Fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle by John Per­ry Bar­low, can’t believe I haven’t seen this before. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.) They put up a Web site, and I start­ed to get email from peo­ple @cia.gov, indi­cat­ing that the Inter­net had made it to Lan­g­ley. Anoth­er sys­temic deficit of intel­li­gence lies, inter­est­ing­ly enough, in the area of good old-fash­ioned spy­ing. (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012.).