Al-Qaeda’s finances are at their weakest point in years due to a successful campaign to close off major sources of funding. In an article for the IHS Defense, Security, and Risk Consulting publication, I examine the options left to the group, which is increasingly turning to a model of low-level threats from individuals, rather than spectacular orchestrated attacks.
Recent articles have reported on New York Police intelligence operations in the post 9-11 era. It appears Muslim communities in the greater New York and New Jersey area as well as several educational institutions with Muslim students have been targeted by the police. I have mixed emotions about this. New York is “target central” for certain terrorist organizations, but who has legal oversight for the NYPD?
The past couple of days have been bloody as Iran and its surrogates and Israel fight a dirty war of retribution using the streets of innocent countries as fields of battle. Additionally, the Iranian Navy continues to threaten the world’s oil shipping lanes with rhetoric and by making furtive moves against the U.S. Navy. I think we are very close to the tipping point of war with Iran, and in my opinion, the more time we wait, the more dangerous they become.
Let’s start with a quiz. Who is the biggest spy in modern US history? If you said Aldridge Ames, or Robert Hanson, you’d be wrong. It was PFC Bradley Manning, of WikiLeaks fame, who despite being a very junior analyst in a tactical military HQ, gave away to his accomplice/handler Julian Asange more volume of stolen intel than anyone ever. Bottom line, cyber has changed the world of intel, and this is just one example.
I had the privilege of recently attending a two-day seminar on Intelligence Led Policing (ILP). Law enforcement officials and academics educated participants on the tenets of ILP and how to better equip officers to begin to use ILP in their police departments. Regardless of what it’s called – be it ILP, smart policing or predictive analytics – the best practice comes down to this: Police gather information, they evaluate and analyze that information, and they create a threat assessment. That information and resulting analysis drive the agency’s strategy and its actions.
Last week, Thai police arrested Atris Hussein, a suspected Hizballah operative, at the Bangkok airport, while another suspect escaped. Elsewhere in the capital, authorities seized a large cache of chemical explosives composed of ammonium nitrate and urea fertilizer. These discoveries of Hizballah bombmaking in Thailand are no surprise given the group’s long history of terrorist operations in Southeast Asia.
In the Second World War, the iconic phrase “loose lips sink ships” summed up the need for keeping information that could be useful to the enemy to only those who need it. It’s 70 years later and the social imperative for who needs information has diametrically changed. On any social networking site, there are opportunities for our enemies to identify us and use that information to plan attacks, both physical and cyber.
Intelligence bill makes DHS I&A officially part of spook group – FierceHomelandSecurity The fiscal 2012 intelligence community authorization bill signed into law Jan. 3 by President Obama officially codifies the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis as part of that community.
America’s intelligence community finds itself pressed to deal with the “Wild West” frontier of an ever-expanding cyber space. From Twitter to blogs to e-mail, the changes are coming hard and fast for governments, businesses and individuals worldwide. The challenges for the American policy maker and the intelligence community are simple and yet hugely complex. So far, by our own admission, we appear not to be passing the grade.
DailyTech – New Bill Urges U.S. Intelligence Agencies to Share Cyber Threat Info with Private Sector Members of the U.S. House intelligence committee have proposed a bill that would allow private firms to receive cyber threat-related information from government agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA).
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