American Spies Are Using MapD This Season
November 11, 2016
Spies have cool gadgets to do their jobs. Since the advent of the digital age, their gadgets not only have gotten cooler, but more complex. Spy technology is built on the same software used in other non-intelligence-related industries. Datanmi shares the CIA’s next technology investment in, “Why America’s Spy Agencies Are Investing In MapD.”
Q-Tel heads the CIA technological venture and they decided to run their new innovations on MapD. The article makes an apt point that the CIA has fallen into the big data pool like the rest of the world, thus they are encountering many of the same problems as other industries. Some of these problems include too much data and not enough time, funds, or ways to interpret it.
One reason that Q-Tel has turned to MapD is that it uses GPUs. MapD is a very fast SQL database and, unlike many of its counterparts, it was specifically designed to run on GPUs. It also includes a visual analytics layer that allows users to interact with data.
The CIA wants to use MapD to speed up its technology, so it can process and interpret its data faster than before. It is straight forward why the CIA wants to use MapD.
Do not think this will be the last development from MapD this year. The young company has already rounded up investors:
MapD is still ramping up. The San Francisco-based company completed a $12-million round of financing earlier this year, which In-Q-Tel was a part of. The company has 30 employees, and a handful of customers (Mostak says “in the tens”) across various industries. The software is being used by oil and gas companies, banks, hedge funds, retailers, ad tech firms, and the U.S. Government, the CEO confirms.
MapD will power an entire generation of CIA intelligence technology. That is something you will not learn from the latest spy movie.
Whitney Grace, November 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The CIA Claims They Are Psychic
November 2, 2016
Today’s headline sounds like something one would read printed on a grocery store tabloid or a conspiracy Web site. Before I start making claims about the Illuminati, this is not a claim about magical powers, but rather big data and hard science…I think. Defense One shares that, “The CIA Says It Can Predict Social Unrest As Early As 3 To 5 Days Out.” While deep learning and other big data technology is used to drive commerce, science, healthcare, and other industries, law enforcement officials and organizations are using it to predict and prevent crime.
The CIA users big data to analyze data sets, discover trends, and predict events that might have national security ramifications. CIA Director John Brennan hired Andrew Hallman to be the Deputy Director for Digital Innovations within the agency. Under Hallman’s guidance, the CIA’s “anticipatory intelligence” has improved. The CIA is not only using their private data sets, but also augment them with open data sets to help predict social unrest.
The big data science allows the CIA to make more confident decisions and provide their agents with better information to assess a situation.
Hallman said analysts are “becoming more proficient in articulating” observations to policymakers derived in these new ways. What it adds up to, Hallman said, is a clearer picture of events unfolding—or about to unfold—in an increasingly unclear world.
What I wonder is how many civil unrest events have been prevented? For security reasons, some of them remain classified. While the news is mongering fear, would it not be helpful if the CIA shared some of its success stats with the news and had them make it a priority to broadcast it?
Whitney Grace, November 2, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Government Seeks Sentiment Analysis on Its PR Efforts
September 6, 2016
Sentiment analysis is taking off — government agencies are using it for PR purposes. Next Gov released a story, Spy Agency Wants Tech that Shows How Well Its PR Team Is Doing, which covers the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s request for information about sentiment analysis. The NGA hopes to use this technology to assess their PR efforts to increase public awareness of their agency and communicate its mission, especially to groups such as college students, recruits and those in the private sector. Commenting on the bigger picture, the author writes,
The request for information appears to be part of a broader effort within the intelligence community to improve public opinion about its operations, especially among younger, tech-savvy citizens. The CIA has been using Twitter since 2014 to inform the public about the agency’s past missions and to demonstrate that it has a sense of humor, according to an Nextgov interview last year with its social media team. The CIA’s social media director said at the time there weren’t plans to use sentiment analysis technology to analyze the public’s tweets about the CIA because it was unclear how accurate those systems are.
The technologies used in sentiment analysis such as natural language processing and computational linguistics are attractive in many sectors for PR and other purposes, the government is no exception. Especially now that CIA and other organizations are using social media, the space is certainly ripe for government sentiment analysis. Though, we must echo the question posed by the CIA’s social media director in regards to accuracy.
Megan Feil, September 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/DarkWeb meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
Is the NSA Is Overwhelmed with Data?
June 28, 2016
US citizens are worried about their civil liberties being compromised by the National Security Agency. ZDNet reports they might not need to be worried anymore in the article, “NSA Is So Overwhelmed With Data, It’s No Longer Effective, Says Whistleblower.”
William Binney is a former official from the National Security Agency (NSA) with thirty years under his belt. Binney has been a civilian for fifteen years, but he is abhorred with the NSA. He said the NSA is so engorged with data that it has lost its effectiveness and important intelligence is lost in the mess. This is how the terrorists win. Binney also shared that an NSA official could run a query and be overwhelmed with so much data they would not know where to start.
” ‘That’s why they couldn’t stop the Boston bombing, or the Paris shootings, because the data was all there,’ said Binney. Because the agency isn’t carefully and methodically setting its tools up for smart data collection, that leaves analysts to search for a needle in a haystack. ‘The data was all there… the NSA is great at going back over it forensically for years to see what they were doing before that,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t stop it.’”
The problems are worse across the other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and DEA. Binney left the NSA one month after 9/11 and reported that the NSA uses an intrusive and expensive data collection system. The mantra is “to collect it all”, but it is proving ineffective and expensive. According to Binney, it is also taking away half the Constitution.
Binney’s statements remind me of the old Pokémon games. The catchphrase for the franchise is “gotta catch ‘em all” and it was easy with 150 Pokémon along with a few cheat codes. The games have expanded to over seven hundred monsters to catch, plus the cheat codes have been dismantled making it so overwhelming that the game requires endless hours just to level up one character. The new games are an ineffective way to play, because it takes so long and there is just too much to do. The NSA is suffering from too many Pokémon in the form of data.
Whitney Grace, June 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Be the CIA Librarian
May 3, 2016
Research is a vital tool for the US government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency which is why they employee librarians. The Central Intelligence Agency is one of the main forces of the US Intelligence Community, focused on gathering information for the President and the Cabinet. The CIA is also the topic of much fictionalized speculation in stories, mostly spy and law enforcement dramas. Having played an important part in the United States history, could you imagine the files in its archives?
If you have a penchant for information, the US government, and a library degree then maybe you should apply to the CIA’s current job opening: as a CIA librarian. CNN Money explains one of the perks of the job is its salary: “The CIA Is Hiring…A $100,000 Librarian.” Beyond the great salary, which CNN is quick to point out is more than the typical family income. Librarians server as more than people who recommend decent books to read, they serve as an entry point for research and bridge the gap between understanding knowledge and applying it in the actual field.
“In addition to the cachet of working at the CIA, ‘librarians also have opportunities to serve as embedded, or forward deployed, information experts in CIA offices and select Intelligence Community agencies.’ Translation: There may be some James Bond-like opportunities if you want them.”
Most of this librarian’s job duties will probably be assisting agents with tracking down information related to intelligence missions and interpreting it. It is just a guess, however. Who knows, maybe the standard CIA agent touts a gun to the stacks?
Whitney Grace, May 3, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Long Goodbye of Internet Freedom Heralded by CISA
January 8, 2016
The article on MotherBoard titled Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving in America paints a bleak picture of our access to the “open internet.” In spite of the net neutrality win this year, broadband adoption is decreasing, and the number of poor Americans forced to choose between broadband and smartphone internet is on the rise. In addition to these unfortunate trends,
“Congress and President Obama made the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act a law by including it in a massive budget bill (as an extra gift, Congress stripped away some of the few privacy provisions in what many civil liberties groups are calling a “surveillance bill”)… Finally, the FBI and NSA have taken strong stands against encryption, one of the few ways that activists, journalists, regular citizens, and yes, criminals and terrorists can communicate with each other without the government spying.”
What this means for search and for our access to the Internet in general, is yet to be seen. The effects of security laws and encryption opposition will obviously be far-reaching, but at what point do we stop getting the information that we need to be informed citizens?
And when you search, if it is not findable, does the information exist?
Chelsea Kerwin, January 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Magnetic Forensics Partners with In-Q-Tel to Battle Rising Cyber Crimes
January 6, 2016
The article on GCN titled In-Q-Tel Invests in Digital Forensics Firm discusses the recent addition of Magnetic Forensics to the In-Q-Tel investment portfolio. Digital forensics software is making large strides to improve the safety and security of data in a time when hackers seem unstoppable, and this is the area Magnetic Forensics’ applies expertise and innovation. In-Q-Tel is a technology investment firm that supports and coordinates with the CIA and Intelligence Community. The article explains,
Magnetic Forensics’ flagship product, Internet Evidence Finder, recovers unstructured data — such as social media, chat messages and e-mail from computers, smartphones and tablets — and structures the data for analysis and collaboration. It has been used by 2,700 public safety organizations in 92 counties to investigate cases related to cybercrime, terrorism, child exploitation and insider threats.
Given the almost daily reminders of the vulnerability of our data, investment in this sort of software is timely. Magnetic Forensics’ CEO Adam Belsher explained that IEF works by opening the pipeline of investigator workflow, organizing backlogs, and urgently absorbing the facts of the case to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand. Additionally, the partnership will enhance In-Q-Tel’s existing product line while allowing for the creation of new resources for cyber security.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
No Mole, Just Data
November 23, 2015
It all comes down to putting together the pieces, we learn from Salon’s article, “How to Explain the KGB’s Aazing Success Identifying CIA Agents in the Field?” For years, the CIA was convinced there was a Soviet mole in their midst; how else to explain the uncanny knack of the 20th Century’s KGB to identify CIA agents? Now we know it was due to the brilliance of one data-savvy KGB agent, Yuri Totrov, who analyzed U.S. government’s personnel data to separate the spies from the rest of our workers overseas. The technique was very effective, and all without the benefit of today’s analytics engines.
Totrov began by searching the KGB’s own data, and that of allies like Cuba, for patterns in known CIA agent postings. He also gleaned a lot if info from publicly available U.S. literature and from local police. Totrov was able to derive 26 “unchanging indicators” that would pinpoint a CIA agent, as well as many other markers less universal but useful. Things like CIA agents driving the same car and renting the same apartment as their immediate predecessors. Apparently, logistics agents back at Langley did not foresee that such consistency, though cost-effective, could be used against us.
Reporter Jonathan Haslam elaborates:
“Thus one productive line of inquiry quickly yielded evidence: the differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a ‘political’ or ‘consular’ official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased.”
In the era of Big Data, it seems like common sense to expect such deviations to be noticed and correlated, but it was not always so obvious. Nevertheless, Totrov’s methods did cause embarrassment for the agency when they were revealed. Surely, the CIA has changed their logistic ways dramatically since then to avoid such discernable patterns. Right?
Cynthia Murrell, November 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Digital Reasoning a Self-Described Cognitive Computing Company
June 26, 2015
The article titled Spy Tools Come to the Cloud on Enterprise Tech shows how Amazon’s work with analytics companies on behalf of the government have realized platforms like “GovCloud”, with increased security. The presumed reason for such platforms being the gathering of intelligence and threat analysis on the big data scale. The article explains,
“The Digital Reasoning cognitive computing tool is designed to generate “knowledge graphs of connected objects” gleaned from structured and unstructured data. These “nodes” (profiles of persons or things of interest) and “edges” (the relationships between them) are graphed, “and then being able to take this and put it into time and space,” explained Bill DiPietro, vice president of product management at Digital Reasoning. The partners noted that the elastic computing capability… is allowing customers to bring together much larger datasets.”
For former CIA staff officer DiPietro it logically follows that bigger questions can be answered by the data with tools like the AWS GovCloud and subsequent Hadoop ecosystems. He cites the ability to quickly spotlight and identify someone on a watch list out of the haystack of people as the challenge set to overcome. They call it “cluster on demand,” the process that allows them to manage and bring together data.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 26, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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