by Jody Ray Bennett

Just days before the end of 2011, the US House Judiciary Committee held its final hearings that year on the issue of SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act), a piece of legislation that sets out to “[expand] the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.” Building upon the lesser known PIPA (the PROTECT IP Act or, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), SOPA helped close out the year with controversy characterized by inflamed debate, widespread online hysteria, and hyperbole from supporters and detractors alike – most of which ironically took place on the very turf SOPA is targeting – our beloved information superhighway.

The content of SOPA is very complex, not so much in any sort of details that outline how piracy would be stopped, but because the language is extremely broad. Due to SOPA’s ambiguous language, it is easy to speculate on what the Internet may look like if SOPA becomes the law of the land in the United States. This alone has caused much of the agitation from copyright holders and digital freedom of speech activists alike.

The most basic understanding of SOPA was described in a November 2011 PC World-Business Center article. Essentially, the bill would “allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders requiring online advertising networks, payment processors and other organizations to stop payments to websites and Web-based services accused of copyright infringement.” Wikipedia, which has come out strongly against the bill, summarized its effect this way:

Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 pieces of music or movies within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

This has created something of a schism between big media and technology companies seeking to protect their intellectual property from being pirated and in some cases, resold by what they have deemed as “rogue websites.” The situation becomes stickier when innovations or social networking sites created by these large companies allows for users to host or share content within its platform. One article recently noted:

If a ‘directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link’ is found to distribute content without permission, [SOPA] would allow copyright owners or the Attorney General to sue for the deletion of that Internet service from the United States Internet by rendering it unsearchable on search engines and impossible to access with United States DNS servers. (Security experts worry that this will cause Americans who still want to access sites like RapidShare to rely on foreign DNS servers, which would open another can of worms.) Certain protections are available — for example, the offending site has to be determined not to have significant non-infringing uses, which would appear to cover most of the services listed above. However, that is subject to interpretation. Even though Apple reportedly paid $100 million to the major labels for permission to launch the iCloud music locker, it could easily be argued that the majority of content stored there and on any other “legal” music locker service technically infringes on copyright.

This facet alone has caused the divide between big entertainment companies and big tech companies, all of which perceive SOPA differently based on their own interests both inside and outside of the market.

How Open Source Intelligence affects, alters, challenges foreign policy

By Jody Ray Bennett

The common sentiment in the American press—even in some academic analysis of international relations—is a variance of the phrase that still seems to be referenced ad-nauseum, that 9/11 changed everything. What was used as perhaps the quickest explanation of why the US was fighting a vague enemy in two wars, one admittedly as a result of faulty or “bad” intelligence, was that “everything changed after 9/11”. Notably, this was the narrative that appeared in ubiquitous fashion in every feverous op-ed or global security analysis well after the attacks.

Many things happened after that infamous day. A refreshed era of American ‘exceptionalism’ ushered in the doctrines of preventative war, a new justification for global military dominance, and an expressed need for a heightened security, exercised by exhaustive measures to gather intelligence via traditional and non-traditional methods.

But what changed, even before the 9/11 attacks ever happened—perhaps even regardless of those attacks—was the exponential growth of digital communication born from the simple computer network.

As access to the internet grew globally, global communication inevitably followed with it. Most fascinating is that this globalization of communication occurred—and is still occurring—in a virtual space. The digital age of information has taken humankind down a fascinating road. Not only can internet users chat with people in remote areas of the planet, manage their finances over interstate networks, or participate in virtual college courses, interested governments and businesses alike can now use this same platform to mine, gather, and obtain various levels of information, or digital intelligence. This type of intelligence is typically referred to as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), but it is a type of intelligence no longer exclusive to state governments.

A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service described OSINT as intelligence and information as of which is:

[D]erived from newspapers, journals, radio and television, and the internet. Intelligence analysts have long used such information to supplement classified data, but systematically collecting open source information has not been a priority of the U.S. Intelligence Community. In recent years, given changes in the international environment, there have been calls, from Congress and the 9/11 Commission among others, for a more intense and focused investment in open source collection and analysis. However, some still emphasize that the primary business of intelligence continues to be obtaining and analyzing secrets. A consensus now exists that OSINT must be systematically collected and should constitute an essential component of analytical products.

Private corporations, NGOs, journalists, publishers (see: WikiLeaks), hobbyists, and travelers alike all share a new tap into the stream of information that was once exclusively owned and operated by the state. And that is significant. It means that the state as we have come to know it, insofar as intelligence gathering and analysis is concerned, has weakened and allowed other actors to participate alongside itself, or—and perhaps more plausibly— that because so much information is available now, the state never had a chance to monopolize it in the first place. In other words, as the state was the primary investor into the technology that would create the information super highway, the state unknowingly placed itself into a world in which it was forced to utilize andshare that very platform with a host of other actors in the pursuit intelligence gathering and information consumption. And that means the state is competing, for better or worse, with other non-state actors in the game of intelligence data mining—ultimately digital information management sensitive to national security.

So why is this important? The very existence of OSINT means that any interested government, specifically those that currently hold political and economic influence on a regional or global scale—hegemons—are now forced to get in the game of data management and governance in pursuit of its own regional or global interests.

And this is tricky, especially when non-state actors have the ability to obtain information once exclusively owned by nation-states. WikiLeaks showed the world how easy it is to leak highly sensitive information, the contents of which can be argued as a form of leaked, publicized OSINT. Even at the lowest level, bureaucrats and investors alike can seek out, deduce and extrapolate information found in small circulation newspapers in any country in which an interest exists. In fact, because so much information is so widely available, some argue that the vast majority of the intelligence gathered by mandated state departments like the US Central Intelligence Agency or Britain’s MI5 is done so via OSINT.

Robert David Steele, former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, has stated in various speeches and publications just how widespread open sourced intelligence is:

“The Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) discovered that 80% or more of what it needed to do policy, acquisition, and operations intelligence support was not secret, not in English, not online, and not known to anyone in Washington, D.C.  That is still true today [July 2007]. OSINT changes the rules of the game by making everyone in the audience a player with a legitimate right to collect, produce, and consume public intelligence […] Today, U.S. ‘intelligence’ is upside down and inside out. It is upside down because it relies on satellites in outer space rather than human eyes on the ground. It is inside out because it tries to divine intelligence unilaterally, without first asking anyone else what information they might provide.”

The redistribution of information that occurs online means that the hard data, information, stories, narratives, even rumors become a part of intelligence that is now digital and that must be managed if any entity, public of private, seeks to maintain power, seek an opportunity, or find an advantage. A 2008 report by the Swiss Institute of Technology’s Center for Security Studies described the parallels between OSINT stuffs now available online:

The evolu­tion of the internet and the emergence of the collaborative web have alerted security actors to the potential of new tools and technologies for collecting, analyzing, and distributing knowledge on global affairs. The proliferation of websites, portals, wikis, and blogs has opened a world of informa­tion hitherto unavailable to most intelli­gence professionals. Google Earth provides more geospatial intelligence than was available to most governments less than a decade ago. Even services such as Wikipedia are increasingly cited as intelligence sources. There is also a growing market for commercial intelli­gence vendors offering products and serv­ices previously restricted to the public sec­tor. Thanks to the information revolution, the traditional intelligence community no longer has a monopoly on the skills or in­formation needed to understand, analyze, or address today’s security threats.

The global acknowledgement of OSINT as a resource occurred after the fall the Soviet Union. While typically still used as a resource by governments and some journalists, it was not until the (perception of) the decentralization of an external threat that helped thrust OSINT into much more effective use.

According to the Center for Security Studies, “During the Cold War, intelligence services were pre-occupied with a limited number of largely state-centric challenges. Discovering the intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union was the primary task of the West­ern intelligence community. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, these threats have multiplied and become more diverse in terms of their agents and nature.”

So did 9/11 change everything? Indeed, it helped place OSINT on the agenda of many governments around the globe. As more information became available, governments and non-governments the world over used OSINT as a resource to predict or shape policies in terms of where they found themselves influenced (or influencing) regionally.

How OSINT has altered or even challenged the foreign policy of states is much more precarious. When data is leaked or released for public consumption and is perceived by the state as a threat to national security (again, WikiLeaks provides a good example here), unofficial policy has a higher chance of undergoing alteration. Because of OSINT, public relations material and an array of damage control resources are kept close by in case especially damaging information about the state is released, uncovered or leaked.

Now that the global political game is now being played in the Age of (Digital) Information, the state is forced to take on a heightened responsibility to manage data—to manage its secrets, non-secrets, and absorb the shock against damaging classified and secret information that later becomes leaked and published (and thereby corroborating and legitimizing correct OSINT analyses). This is a significant first for humankind, and will undoubtedly spin off several national (even global) debates about information security and protection, digital privacy rights, and the overall interlinking between data management and political governance.

The Republic of Seychelles has issued China with an open invitation to establish an anti-piracy base in the small island republic. If accepted, this invitation will have security and strategic consequences for the region.
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

On December 3^rd 2011, as part of a ‘goodwill’ trip to the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles, Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie met with Seychelles President James Michel and announced a boost in military cooperation between the two states. It was the first time a Chinese defense minister had visited the islands in the nations’ 36 years of ‘uninterrupted partnership’.

During the trip, Michel announced that the island republic would officially invite China to establish a military base there to help with its ramping up of efforts to combat piracy. The Republic of Seychelles spans an archipelago of over 100 islands approximately 1,500 kilometers off the eastern coast of Africa, just north of the island nation of Madagascar. Despite efforts by the international community and the constant patrolling of warships, this region is still heavily affected by organized (and unorganized) piracy by non-state actors.

Foreign Affairs Minister of Seychelles, Jean-Paul Adam, stated, “Together, we need to increase our surveillance capacity in the Indian Ocean [...] as Seychelles has a strategic position between Asia and Africa.” According to one report by Agence France-Presse, Seychelles and China signed on to a military cooperation agreement in 2004 which “has enabled some 50 Seychelles soldiers to be trained in China.” Adam reminded the media that China has already given two light aircraft to the Republic, with the visit by Liang signaling a renewed agreement with China for increased financial support, military equipment and further military training. Chinese media reiteratedSeychelles’ adherence to the One-China policy.

While security and defense contracting in Africa is nothing new, the awarding of another multi-million dollar contract by the US State Department to a controversial private security operation is perhaps indicative of just how thinly stretched the US military is becoming. This does not bode well for either oversight or accountability.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

---

From the outsourcing of security functions to widespread mercenary activity, contracting on the African continent is nothing new. For decades the continent has been a playground for private third parties involved in everything from the training of militaries to the toppling of governments, to the legitimate and illicit arms trades. That an impressive volume of literature and documentary evidence exists on the private involvement of individuals and companies in the shaping of the African security economy speaks to this.

DynCorp’s contract

And so it follows: last June, DynCorp International - one of the “Big Three” armed security contractors that arrived in Iraq back in 2003 alongside Blackwater/Xe andTriple Canopy - announced that it had been awarded a State Department contract toprovide training to the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the details of the mission remain purposely ambiguous, the contract does specify that the task order was issued by the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, has a base time limit of one year with two additional option years and will focus on training junior to mid-level military personnel in functional areas such as communications, logistics and engineering.

Amid uprisings throughout the Middle East, Washington and Riyadh have quietly agreed to train a new force to fend off a potential uprising against the Saudi kingdom.

 

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

On 10 March 2011, Saudi security analyst, Nawaf Obaid, wrote an article in Foreign Policy that proclaimed, “There Will Be No Uprising in Saudi Arabia”. The article sparked discussion – not only because Obaid has been accused of being an “indefatigable Washington gadfly” who works to provoke specific outcomes in US-Saudi relations – but because he boldly predicted such an outcome in the midst of unprecedented upheaval in the region: Saudi Arabia has yet to witness any substantial internal uprising.

The US military – the world’s single biggest user of petrol – is intent on reducing its costly oil consumption without having to suffer major cuts to its force. How? The Department of Defense is committed to going “green”, making energy a strategic issue for the first time.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

Last October, the US Navy unveiled the first military vessel to run on “eco-friendly fuel.” The 49-foot command ship can carry up to 24 troops and runs entirely on a combination of algae-based fuel and diesel. As the Wired report notes, this came months after the US Military launched its “Green Hornet” jet in celebration of Earth Day – an “unmodified F/A-18 Super Hornet [using] a 50/50 blend of camelina-sourced biofuel and traditional JP-5 fuel.” In 2009, General Dynamics created a military ground vehicle based on hybrid technology.

All of this is part of a much greater plan for the Pentagon to reduce its oil consumption without having to sacrifice major cuts to its force size. Ironically, while the US Department of Energy remained silent, the US military was the first to warn that oil production could dip, causing massive shortages by 2015. As a Guardian report notes, “Future fuel supplies are of acute importance to the US military because it is believed to be the biggest single user of petrol in the world.”

Despite a tarnished image, the private military security industry is thriving – and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In fact, these private companies continue to expand their reach beyond security and military matters into nearly every facet of government service.

Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

A recent report from ProPublica, based on analysis of US Department of Labor statistics, showed that “more private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months,” making 2010 the “first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses on America’s battlefields.”

The swelling numbers of contractor deaths could only result from the greatest foreign policy experiment in privatization in US history. These numbers call for a closer look at the changing role of private force and its impact on the industry.

Damage control

For years the private military and security industry has dealt with a troubled, tarnished image resulting from several high-profile abuses perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade. As Blackwater quickly became the most recognized and controversial name in the industry, it long ago set out to rebrand its image, changing its name to Xe Services. More recently the entire industry appears to have felt the need for a new marketing strategy. For example, the industry’s trade union and lobbying group, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), changed its name to the International Stability Operations Association (ISOA).

As thousands of US soldiers leave the Iraqi battlefield, the US military ramps up efforts to increase unmanned and automated technologies, Jody Ray Bennett writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Security Watch

Last July, Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, with the help of Carnegie Mellon University, developed a navigation system that allows the full-sized helicopters to fly at low altitudes without a pilot. These new unmanned helicopters are the latest in automated military technology; where the predator drone UAV demonstrated a significant step in the development of unmanned – and lethal – military technologies, these helicopters can now be controlled remotely by nothing more than a pilot and computer.

In a press release from Helicopter Association International, such autonomous flight at low altitudes is an “unprecedented” innovation, and can be used for “future unmanned helicopters to evacuate wounded soldiers from contaminated or live-fire battlefields and to resupply forward military bases [as well as] aid to help both military and civilian pilots avoid obstacles, such as power lines, and select landing sites in unimproved areas such as emergency scenes, even when operating in low-light or low-visibility conditions.”

Found here.

Kandahar, Afghanistan — Moving all the things 100,000 troops need to fight and survive in a hostile foreign land is never an easy task. In a landlocked, mountainous country the size of Texas, with few paved roads, it is even harder.

“I don’t think anyone has ever brought in this much equipment to a landlocked country that has only two major airports,” said Col. Gary Sheffer, acting commanding general of the U.S. Military’s Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan. “Without the road network, the railroad network, it’s a huge effort.”

And the effort has only grown more intense this summer. Sheffer and the 5,000 troops under his command are responsible for supplying all American forces in Afghanistan with everything from food and water to bullets and beds.

They are now on the front lines of President Barack Obama’s troop surge into southern Afghanistan that began this summer. Almost 100,000 U.S. troops are now in Afghanistan — up from about 40,000 when Obama first came into office. That increase has come in a short period of time, with 30,000 arriving in just the last eight months.

From: http://www.tkg.af/english/reports/political/234-top-leaders-tied-to-security-companies

Government leaders are closely linked to ownership of some of the major Afghan-owned security companies, an investigation by The Killid Group has revealed.

President Hamed Karzai has openly accused the companies of thefts, murders, kidnappings and cooperating with the enemy.

The investigation indicates that over 5,000 armed men have been working with security groups belonging to the president’s family members or people close to him.

We also learned that some members of the Northern Alliance, who initially started security companies, have moved into the logistics business – they pay security companies smaller sums to guard their convoys. Interviews with senior officials of six of the biggest companies confirm that the companies belong to such power-brokers.

President Karzai’s statements, we discovered, have had an impact on them – creating a rift between the owners. Some have stepped back and seemingly will end their activities; others have scoffed at the president’s remarks and believe he will be unable to shut down the firms.