We now have information on 800,000 people in our terrorist databases. We have “big data,” as the people would say who pretend to know something about it. Big Data, they often claim, will solve the problem. To my mind, we have a big search, analysis and distribution problem, and despite “big data” claims of prowess, connecting the dots before a terrorist strikes is never going to be an easy thing.
Americans love speed. It is buried deep in their psyche. The good news is we move information fast. The bad news is we sometimes move it too fast. The news of the recent Boston Bombings spread as quickly but far more broadly through social media. The dizzying volume and speed of information was breathtaking. So was the misinformation, rumor and desire to be the first – right or wrong. Thus the challenge of the Internet Age begins – can news be speedy and accurate?
You may not have seen a recent article in Eurasia Review describing how Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is using Internet games to target children at an early age, luring them into extremist beliefs. While Congress is actively seeking ways to limit the extent of those violent acts, we have a moral obligation to consider how other proven sinister forces might be threatening – with the use of popular media – our children and those predisposed to manipulation.
One week ago, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev walked through a crowd at the Boston Marathon and dropped homemade bombs near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 180 others. While investigators wait to question Dzhokhar, homeland and national security experts are looking to U.S. processes and policies for identifying violent extremists. Security expert Dave McWhorter spoke to Canada news broadcast CTV about the hunt for the Boston bombers.
You have heard the saying, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it must be a duck. News sources and government officials tell us we live in a world of constant cyber attack, so we must be at war, right? In cyber world, this kind of talk is harmful and obscures the new world in which we really exist. We are not at war – we are in conflict, and some of the tools we are using cross interesting and controversial 20th-century political lines.
In Security Debrief’s fourth annual April Fools coverage, we’ve collected some stories the rest of the media somehow missed.
When I attend various meetings around DC on cyber issues, I often see confusion and challenge – good people trying to resolve confusing issues, wrestling with individual – as well as the country’s – social and political demons. Cyber is a new kind of land. It has no physical dimension. There are no borders or boundaries, and everyone seems to be a part of something that no one can control. People in DC are bit lost right now, and there are some distinct cultural reasons why.
The Jainists of India have a parable. It is the story about the blind men feeling the elephant – each one feels something different. Watching the Federal government roll out a cyber “strategy” over the past couple of week has felt just that way. The cyber-elephant is a vast and ever-expanding body, and Washington is mucking around this way because of two basic problems. In its simplistic form, the first challenge is definitional and the second challenge is doctrinal.
While Sunday’s Forward On Climate rally in Washington, DC may not have attracted the hundreds of thousands of people that organizers had hoped for, it was still the largest environmental protest in U.S. history. Environmental causes in general, and the Tar Sands issue in particular, are gathering support across the country with an increasing number of groups becoming involved in direct action and civil disobedience protests.
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