FBI Without Email Addresses
CNN- Apparently the FBI Office in New York does not have the money to pay for email addresses for the staff.
“As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,” Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.
“We just don’t have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field,” he said…
…Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau’s 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.
I wonder what bureaucratic hurdles are in place preventing a cost effective solution from being implemented.
CIA Troubles
Funny how these three articles are intersecting –
Goss is, reasonably enough, attempting to prevent leaks such as the torture flights fiasco –
But the side effect of that is –
And he’s not paying much attention to what’s publicly available –
Simply put, the CIA and the government as a whole are having a hard time dealing with broadband international connectivity and the sheer amount of associated information. People whose lives have revolved around controlling and manipulating information are now being forced to adapt to an environment where they simply can not. During this transition time (assuming there is a possibility for the CIA to retain functionality in an era where I can google someone to see if they are in fact a spy) people are going to pay for it with their lives.
With the intersection of these three, and the knowledge that the state will increasingly fail to protect us from foreign and domestic enemies, we see a pretty dreary picture. Instead of attempting to utilize a risk averse arcane bureaucracy, the government should be emulating new organizational structures (read open source networks etc).
To just that end, Robert Steele, a retired Clandestine Case Officer (Read CIA Spook) has a venture – Open Source Solutions, Inc – which serves as a privatized model for an open source (OSINT if you will) intelligence network which focuses on utilizing all major languages public information to deal with future threats.
The problem with that, however, is that the state would have to move beyond its current limitations. As demonstrated here – when the potential of the nation state is achieved (that threshold being a dynamic level) – we will move on.
Cost of Countering the IED Threat
Good article from the AP –
This quote hits the crux of the problem –
Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. “They adapt more quickly than we procure technology,” he said of the insurgents.
While this illustrates the sheer ineffectiveness of our spending –
The Pentagon’s upgraded Joint IED Defeat Organization is getting a sharply increased $3.3 billion this year to foil the often rudimentary weapons, which the Iraqi resistance generally fashions from artillery and mortar rounds. The “JIEDDO” staff of explosives experts and others will almost triple, to 365.
From 2004 to 2006, some $6.1 billion will have been spent on the U.S. effort — comparable, in equivalent dollars, to the cost of the Manhattan Project installation that produced plutonium for World War II’s atom bombs.
…Since mid-2005, an average of about 40 Americans a month have been killed by improvised explosives, twice the rate of the previous 12 months, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that tracks casualties in Iraq.
This massive return on investment will perpetuate this conflict (with increasing degrees of violence) and will serve as the primary reason as to why we will not be able to sustain our efforts in Iraq.
Moussaoui Trial Fiasco
Via CNN –
According to letter, seven current and former employees of the Federal Aviation Administration were sent transcripts from last week’s opening statements and first four days of testimony.
Brinkema said the e-mails “blatantly” violated her February 22 order stating that no trial witness “may attend or otherwise follow trial proceedings, such as read transcripts, before they are called to testify.”
Just another drop in the bucket marking the inability of the bureaucratic nature of our government to effectively handle secrecy and counter terrorism. The fact that this is a 9/11 related trial compounds this ineffectiveness.
At some point this bucket will reach its threshold.
Port Deal Over
DP World says no thanks. The regressive isolationist thinly veiled racism of public outcry regarding this deal does not bode well for the future of the GWOT. The UAE is our gateway to the Middle East, and apparently we’re doing our best to close that door.