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Just in case you thought we forgot (Able Danger)

A great series of questions and answers about Able Danger at Rory O’Conner’s blog that summarizes all you need to know (before the knock on the door comes).

(more shortly)

This ought to be interesting

GCN keeps setting them up . . .

The Homeland Security Department will test how well it works with other federal agencies and private IT companies to protect cybersecurity in a national exercise Feb. 6-10.

The Information Technology Information-Sharing and Analysis Center will take part in the exercise, known as Cyber Storm, with DHS to test its draft concept of operations for responding to cybersecurity incidents.

 

[…]

Cyber Storm initially was to be held in November 2005, but it was postponed because of the department’s involvement in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.

Good thing there is no chance of a natural and cyber disaster taking place at the same time . . .

I won’t belabor earlier points made about DHS maladies and information sharing woes in general, suffice it to say that the words “make or break” are coming to mind when I think about events like this. Not the first time such work has been done and odds are it won’t be the last. Learning opportunities? Sure, but given that we’ve been dealing with such crises for several years now one would think that a certain level of competence would have been achieved by now.

Don’t Call it a Set Back

Catching up on more GCN tid-bits:

John Russack, program manager for the Information-Sharing Environment in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, is leaving the post, according to a statement released today by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill).

“It is a troubling setback that John Russack, the Bush administration’s top official in charge of implementing a government-wide initiative to enhance information-sharing between local, state and federal officials, is stepping down,” Durbin said in a statement.

“It appears that our best efforts to implement 21st-century technology for information-sharing are still far behind. Today’s announcement tells us that plans for moving forward may be delayed or jeopardized,” Durbin said.

People wonder why local authorities have such contempt for federal “information sharing” initiatives. If you didn’t know any better you’d think the problem was insurmountable.

 

The fact of the matter is that all the policy decisions along these lines are no good unless there is a strong education effort for the workforce (reporting on what was done with “US Persons” data in the Able Danger case is illustrative) and there is a simple mechanism for point-to-point sharing. “Write to release” is only a half measure. Complicated gate-keeping mechanisms are supposed to prevent unintentional leaks, but the end result is a clogged drain.

 

With any luck some alternatives will get off the ground soon that will drive these points home. In the mean time the best information sharing methodology is still a cop, a trooper, a special agent and an intelligence officer in a booth at Cap City sharing a pitcher (or three). That’s a shame. It’s fun, but it is still a shame.

Confidence Remains High? (Part II)

Government Computer News reports on DHS’s new “Secure Border Initiative”

 

The Homeland Security Department today took the wraps off its ambitious plan to quickly gain control of the U.S. northern and southern borders by hiring a systems integration contract team to carry out the Secure Border Initiative (SBI).

 

DHS plans to request proposals in March and award a contract by Sept. 30 to deploy new technology as part of a comprehensive overhaul of security between ports of entry along the land borders.

 

OK, the dismal failures of TRAILBLAZER were just pointed out to us (what do you expect when your IT programs include the word “-BREAK” in them?) and that is in the IT savvy NSA. This comes on the heels of news about the colossal failure of the FBI’s Virtual Case File IT project. Less well-known but equally bad are the failures of other IT projects at the IRS and FAA.

 

I believe a secure border is critical to the security of the nation. The Minutemen have proven time and again that a strong physical presence is often the best defense against illegal border crossings. We’re not going to get away from using technology to secure the border, but anyone who is harboring any illusions that SBI is going to be a success is deluding themselves.

 

Even on its best day DHS is a dysfunctional nightmare. Throw in some very clever system integration contractors, an understaffed contracting office, and the inevitable scope-creep that is bound to come into play and the probability that one can use the word “success” in the same sentence as “SBI” in two years is hovering around .02. I could be wrong and I hope I am, but I think we all know where the smart money is going.

Living the Motto?

The FBI Motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity

Her fidelity I can’t speak to . . . whatever bravery she had when she blew the whistle on stupid-headquarters-tricks has long past . . . and as far as integrity, well, read on (from Captain’s Quarters):

[…] former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley […] has descended far into the fever swamp during her brief yet notorious campaign to unseat [MN Congressman] Mr. Kline. W[…] she decided to depict the Marine Corps veteran as a Nazi

There was a time when she was worth listening to. She was someone who risked her career and reputation (see Edmonds, Tice, Shaffer, etc.) to speak out about terrible mistakes that were being made; mistakes that would ultimately cost thousands of lives. What a shame that she’s now willing to use the imagery of people who took millions of lives to win political points.

If the goal of the Rowley campaign was to get into office and try to overhaul the system, well, let me introduce you to a guy I like to call “failure.”

Not to get all political . . .

Contractor’s Dream - Intelligence Nightmare

Siobhan Gorman blazes a trail through Ft. Meade:

A program that was supposed to help the National Security Agency pluck out electronic data crucial to the nation’s safety is not up and running more than six years and $1.2 billion after it was launched, according to current and former government officials.

The classified project, code-named Trailblazer, was promoted as the NSA’s state-of-the-art tool for sifting through an ocean of modern-day digital communications and uncovering key nuggets to protect the nation against an ever-changing collection of enemies.

Its main goal when it was launched in 1999 was to enable NSA analysts to connect the 2 million bits of data the agency ingests every hour — a task that has grown increasingly complex with the advent of the Internet, cell phones, and instant messaging — and enable analysts to quickly pick out the most important information. […]

Trailblazer is “the biggest boondoggle going on now in the intelligence community,” said Matthew Aid, who has advised three recent federal commissions and panels that investigated the Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

A long article that is worth reading.

There was a time when NSA was the king of IT. Today there might be pockets of scary talent in very discrete areas; but by and large things are a mess. There is nothing like working on what you think is a new imitative to solve a unique problem, only to find half-way through development that the people in the next building solved the same problem last year. People wonder why we can’t solve the problem of sharing information between agencies; we can’t even talk to the people down the hall.

There is no sense throwing good money after bad. Listen to Bobby Ray: Scale it WAAAY back to get on base, don’t try to swing for the fence every at-bat (that’s for you P. and J.). That or take a hint from the FBI, scrap it, and start fresh.

Who is Running an IO Campaign?

From LGF:

Search Engine: Google - Search Term: Tiananmen

What the Chinese see

What the rest of the world sees

Secrecy News in the Blogosphere

Yeah, get some!

You might not agree with their positions, but you can’t argue with the quality of their content.

Nothing to See Here

They’re coming to take the waters:

Mexican federal agents have arrested four Iraqis trying to sneak into the United States without proper documents, the government said Monday. [...]

Many undocumented Iraqi nationals have been captured in Mexico en route to the U.S. border. None has been found to have had any links to terrorism.

Rocky Mountain High

William Arkin points out an interesting set of coincidences:

The National Security Agency is in the process of building a new warning hub and data warehouse in the Denver area, realigning much of its workforce from Ft. Meade, Maryland to Colorado.

On the surface, the NSA move seems to be a management and cost cutting measure, part of a post-9/11 decentralization. “This strategy better aligns support to national decision makers and combatant commanders,” an NSA spokesman told the Denver paper.

In truth, NSA is aligning its growing domestic eavesdropping operations — what the administration calls “terrorist warning” in its current PR campaign — with military homeland defense organizations, as well as the CIA’s new domestic operations Colorado.

In May, Dana Priest reported here in The Washington Post that the CIA was planning to shift much of its domestic operations to Aurora, Colorado.

The Division is responsible for exploiting the knowledge of U.S. citizens and foreigners in the United States who might have unique information about foreign countries and terrorist activities. The functions extend from engaging Iraqi or Iranian Americans in covert operations to develop information and networks in their home countries to recruiting foreign students and visitors to be American spies.

Aurora is already a reconnaissance satellite downlink and analytic center focusing on domestic warning. The NSA and CIA join U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) in Colorado. NORTHCOM is post 9/11 the U.S. military command responsible for homeland defense.

There is an old intel joke that goes: “In God we trust, all others we monitor.” The Colorado State Motto is: “Nil Sine Numine - Nothing Without the Deity.” Funny or just weird?

In something that should hit the streets in a few months, I point out the folly of concentrating intel processing and analytical activities in the DC area. In the information age it makes no sense to continue to operate and house your workforce like it was the 50s. Technical aspects of the issue aside (not that they are not important) but think for a minute about the boost that would be felt in quality of life. Less stress on the home front, better output at work. I may be over-simplifying things, but ask a random GS-11 with a family who is contemplating a move to WV because it is the only decent housing he can afford if he’d rather spend 4-5 hours in a car every day, or do the same job in CO (or WA, OR, NE, MO, etc., etc.)? I think we both know the answer.

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