The Political Conundrum!

The Center for Terrorism Research has released its newest report, Terrorism in the West 2008, which I co-authored with my colleagues Joshua D. Goodman and Laura Grossman.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, nor is it likely to disappear anytime soon. It is not the exclusive domain of any single religion or ideology, nor do all terrorists come from the same socioeconomic class or share the same mental pathologies. In part, the diversity within contemporary terrorism is what makes it so much of a challenge. The new report is intended to describe, in great detail, the state of terrorism in Western countries over the course of 2008. It features:

• A comprehensive look at terrorism events in the West, including attacks, failed plots, and arrests.
• A discussion of landmark terrorism prosecutions.
• An assessment of broad trends in terrorist activity over the course of the year.
• Expert commentary from Jeff Breinholt, Rohan Gunaratna, Andrew C. McCarthy, Reuven Paz, and CT Blog Contributing Expert Douglas Farah.

To download the study, click here.

I recently had the fortune to attend a seminar by David Orban on the ‘Internet of Things’ hosted by Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Park. This subject is of deep interest with regard to the future collection of intelligence a fact acknowledged by the National Intelligence Council’s Disruptive Civil Technologies Conference (appendix F). The basic idea surrounding the ‘internet of things’ is that all things become nodes in a global network and to some degree act autonomously or to put it another way, “Our washing machines can ask for soap". This new or developing network creates a new category of object, known as a Spime [SPace +tIME] - a phrase coined by the science fiction writer Bruce Sterling. A Spime was defined by David Orban as an object with memory, computing capacity, location awareness and sensors. These Spimes already exist just not yet to scale. The leading driver of spime networks was initially thought to be RFID tags but actually it is smart phones that are providing the most compelling current platform. A great example of one such, spime is an application developed for the iphone by WideTag - called WideNoise. This uses the iphone to collect decibel readings posting them to a map to determine where the quieter areas in the world are. Following the presentation we divided into groups to design a Spime.

Citizen as Sensor

The Spime I developed in conjunction with two of the SU students was an Intelligence tool – ‘citizen as sensor’. Taking as a start point the success that the Ushahidi project had in tracking both Kenyan post election violence and war-time activity in the Gaza strip we speculated on what an autonomous app might look like, which ran on a smart phone applying a similar theme. Using the idea of unique sound signatures our app, in its first iteration, ‘listened’ for sounds to report them back to a central database. Sounds such as gunfire, military vehicle movement or even militia on horseback provide a unique signature, which could then be used to provide a much richer intelligence picture of events on the ground. Over time other sensors could be layered into the app to monitor the environment for chemical or biological agents or to provide rapid analysis of images. As a system we conceived of this as an open environment. As a quid pro quo for participation, the citizen has the option to subscribe to areas of local interest for feedback, planning and awareness.

The technology clearly already exists for this kind of app, identifying unique sound signatures using a smart phone is present in shazam [which identifies the song playing in a particular locale] the collection of unique sound signatures is also beginning to extend in a variety of different areas including mosquito's. Therefore empowering global citizens to collect a richer level of local intelligence is clearly currently within reach and could be used for their own benefit.

Of course the downside of such a system would be the ability of the bad actors to also use and abuse the data. So far studies on the effectiveness of systems like Ushahidi have shown it remains effective even allowing for misinformation attempts. However, this remains a potentially insurmountable concern. Secondly is the actions of national governments who could shut down cell networks or put pressure on hardware providers to take certain applications down [this last scenario is becoming a constant with Apple’s iphone]. There are some potential solutions for this, P2P cell phone functionality seems like an obvious one, as well as the broad adoption of open platforms such as Android.

While Spime networks seem futuristic they are already here and present current opportunities to collect a richer intelligence picture than was previously possible. It takes little imagination to conceive of a DHS or even NYPD smart phone applications that monitors local conditions based on sound signatures and feeds them back to both government responders and the community of users. The future of intelligence collection may be sitting in the Apple App Store.

A judge ruled Thursday that one of the youngest detainees brought to Guantanamo Bay is being held illegally and must be released.

A U.S. Sailor was sentenced Thursday to life in prison in the stabbing death of a Japanese taxi driver, a crime that led to calls for tougher punishment for American service members who break the law.

Court records from Daniel Patrick Boyd's 1991 trial offer a glimpse into Boyd's unusual life, and may provide some insight into what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says is a growing phenomenon in the U.S. -- the homegrown jihadi.

The House of Representatives has cast aside administration efforts to cut off several big ticket items. A defense spending bill contains money for a new presidential helicopter fleet, cargo jets that the DoD says are not needed, and an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

This is a hot topic this morning in the “milblogosphere”. My buds over at Blackfive.net (both Blackfive himself and Laughing Wolf) felt so strong about this they put up two postings about it HERE and HERE.

 

The Gun Blogger Rendezvous has been trying to support Project Valour-IT with a pistol and customized firearm four day training session raffle.

The raffle tickets could be purchased through paypal, however it appears that pay-pal’s anti-constitution and gun views have caused them to shut down the entire account for this fund-raiser which provides an awesome product and service to our wounded warriors.

 

The statement from Soldier’s Angels Executive Director, Patti Patton-Bader says it all:

 

Online donations through PayPal are a huge part of our fundraising. They shut down our entire account-not just the raffle button—for twelve hours right in the middle of an email fundraising push. Looking at the Terms of Use, we couldn’t understand where we’d gone wrong, but we had to immediately remove the raffle so we could get back online ASAP. This just breaks our hearts because we were so excited about the tremendous fundraising impact the Gun Blogger Rendezvous raffle was already having.

 

Just to be clear, this site also supports Project Valour-IT. I wrote about my own fundraising efforts for them here, http://www.bouhammer.com/2009/07/new-bouhammer-shirt-honoring-militarymon-on-twitter-and-raising-money-for-valour-it/

Saifallah aka Boyd and Hassan

With shock and malaise, Americans are discovering that their country is penetrated by jihadi terrorists, particularly those we call "homegrown." Over the past few months, several alarming cases have been revealed by law enforcement. Not only the frequency of these revelations but also the type of jihadi cells are teaching the public that something very troubling is happening within the homeland: the surge of a threat deserving a greater attention than the current attitude dispensed by the administration.

The arrest of Daniel Patrick Boyd, a married 39-year-old, his two sons, and four other “jihadis” in a rural area south of Raleigh, N.C., is not a little matter in our global analysis of the movement within the United States. “Saifullah,” the jihadi name of Boyd; his two sons, Zakariya, 20, and Dylan, 22; Mohammed Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziad Yaghi, 21, are all U.S. citizens. Hysen Sherifi, 24, a Kosovo national, is a legal resident.

According to government documents (we only read the published ones), this was a group based in the U.S. training and readying to perform “jihad” overseas, like a Virginia predecessor group arrested some eight years ago and charged with using paintball training camps to “strike at targets in the sub Indian continent.” Based on this data alone the North Carolina cell is a combatant group committed to “terror war.” By reviewing this data however and comparing it with the multiple cells dismantled over several years, particularly over the past few months, the matter is more serious.

Furthermore, even though the courts will struggle with defense attorneys’ expected tactics to portray the jihadists as enamored with a “foreign cause,” many in the counterterrorism community would not buy this version. All the hallmarks indicate (based on the published information) that the case is more ominous than thought to be by average citizens. The legal proceedings will take their course and justice will be served in court, but the bigger picture, the troubling questions related to this country’s national security must be addressed seriously and fast, as we read into this case.

A wind of optimism blew over Beirut after the recent general elections won by the pro-Western March 14 bloc in an overall serene atmosphere. Thanks to this, Lebanon has been enjoying so far one of its best tourist seasons in a while. But this might be over soon because of the agenda of extremist elements that have been recently reactivated.

The first usual suspect that has been involved in recent incidents is the Shiite militia Hezbollah. The party of God has built over the years a state within a state and has beefed up its military capabilities after the war with Israel over the summer of 2006. Hezbollah can boast a much more robust and sophisticated army than the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has. According to various reports Hezbollah has rebuilt an arsenal of over 40,000 rockets. And this in clear violation of UN resolution 1701 that was passed at the end of the 2006 war and also under the nose of the UNIFIL forces stationed in the south.
This issue came to the fore with a bang: indeed on July 14, an arms cache belonging and “actively maintained” by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon blew up. That is the conclusion of a just released UN report. On July 15, a UN investigative team was prevented to physically investigate the matter by individuals that a recent UN report describes as members of Hezbollah. According to that same report, these individuals were seen hauling boxes from the explosion site and intended to destroy evidence. A few days later 14 soldiers of UNIFIL were wounded after Shiite “demonstrators”, that happened to be quite well organized, threw stones at them. Interestingly, Hezbollah maintains that the “demonstrators” were just villagers defending their land. Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad went as far as criticizing UNIFIL for not respecting the specificity of the villages and private property. Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s number 2, also turned around the situation accusing UNIFIL of having made a mistake by trying to enter a house without coordinating with the Lebanese army. That last remark is quite telling since the LAF composed of about 30% of Shiite elements has been suspected by many analysts of leaking information to Hezbollah.
This latest incident is just the tip of the iceberg and Hezbollah’s active rearming is worrying numerous Western diplomats. A possible worsening of the situation in southern Lebanon is very much in the cards and even though some believe that Syria has no interest in igniting a fire, Tehran, Hezbollah’s other major supporter, might have another view.

Shiite extremists are not the only ones that have been in the news in Lebanon recently. Sunni extremists linked to Fatah al Islam, a terror group loosely linked to Al Qaeda and that fought the LAF in Nahr el Bared in 2007, were arrested on July 21 by the LAF. This cell was composed of ten members hailing from various Arab countries and one from Greece. The ringleader, a Syrian national, traveled to six Arab countries in 15 days and his group was planning attacks against UNIFIL and Israel. Interestingly this cell was using a billboard advertising agency as cover to spy on UNIFIL forces and LAF as well.
Once again Lebanon is used as a fighting ground for extremists of all kinds. Foreign countries are also very much meddling in domestic affairs. For proof, Saudi Arabia and Syria, respectively the main supporters of the March 14 bloc and the March 8 coalition (that includes Hezbollah, the Shiite Amal and the Christians of General Aoun), have not agreed on the composition of a government and therefore everything is at a standstill.

It is high time that the Lebanese people can decide of their fate themselves but unfortunately that is just wishful thinking at this point.

The NEFA Foundation has released the second installment of a three part report by NEFA Senior Investigator Claudio Franco titled "The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan: The Bajaur Case." The NEFA Foundation has closely followed the evolution of the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s west and recent developments in the region, and the result is a series of reports aimed at covering the situation in the field. The second part of this ongoing series covers the evolution of the all-out confrontation between tribal Taliban militants and the Pakistani Army in Bajaur Agency. This section also takes into consideration the creation of a Sharia Courts system in the tribal Agency and the reaction of the state to the militants’ attempt to institutionalize Taliban rule in Pakistan’s FATAs.

The second part of the series is now available for download on the NEFA website.

(For those who haven't seen part one yet, click here.)