This article is about the guy behind Intellipedia and A-Space.

Mike Wertheimer may be the most dangerous man in U.S. intelligence. You would probably never guess it, judging from his lengthy and opaque title -- assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology. A perfect testament to the well-worn bureaucratic tradition of offering little insight by tossing around a lot of words.

Sharing and secrecy are opposing forces. So this is Wertheimer's task: Transform the massive intelligence bureaucracy into a collaborative network, in which loose lips are, in a way, encouraged; introduce technologies that many seasoned analysts neither understand nor trust; and build a cadre of young, ambitious rookies, who just can't believe they're not allowed to check their personal e-mail at work, into the future of the business.

The opposition is fierce. When The New York Times wrote about A-Space recently, analysts commented about the piece, and about Wertheimer, on a private intelligence community blog. Some recorded their dramatic dissent. "I guarantee," one intelligence employee wrote, "Mike Wertheimer will cause people to get killed over this."

"I am threatening the status quo," Wertheimer says. "And that's a hard pill to swallow for anybody."

ShaneHarris.net: The Liberator - Mike Wertheimer

Road Warrior Training

Our Road Warrior training is designed for the frequent traveler or anyone wanting a deeper knowledge of the air travel experience. This course covers a wide variety of topics and important emergency procedures. Come experience a “behind the scenes” look at our state-of-the-art facilities for a full day of hands-on, interactive learning.

Participants will receive information on emergency exit door and window operation and aircraft decompression. They will also have several opportunities to ride in Delta’s motion-based cabin evacuation simulator, experience a smoke-filled cabin, and participate in a waterditching exercise.

Invest in your employees by demonstrating your concern for their individual safety and well-being. Bring your entire team, as this course is an excellent group-bonding event.

This sounds like a great thing to do for an Industrial Memetics staff retreat. :)

Delta's Road Warrior Training Program

"The Internet is the new Afghanistan," Kelly said, as he released a New York Police Department (NYPD) report on the home-grown threat of attacks by Islamist extremists. "It is the de facto training ground. It's an area of concern."

This goes along great with this "Best Quote of 2006" nominee:

"I'm an artillery officer, and I can't fire cannons at the internet." -- Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt US Central Command

Internet is the new Afghanistan: NY police commissioner

For 90 minutes, through one and a half salted margaritas, John Young has been eyeballing me, speaking softly, fidgeting with the digital recorder I've placed in front of him. He's heard all the questions I am asking before, and he answers them carefully and pleasantly. Then he tells me why he's here.

Young points out how easy it was for me to set up the interview, how accessible he made himself to me. "See, it's standard tradecraft in the spy world to be extremely cooperative to people who are expecting resistance. You just offer all possible help, and they just walk right into it. Did you really think I'd let you interview me, rather than me interview you? I'm plumbing your data. I've learned a lot about how Radar operates. I'm just doing the usual shit that agents do to recruit other agents."

Am I being recruited?

"Yes."

My mission, should I choose to accept it: Find out what happened to Haden-Guest's
story, and write about Haden-Guest's alleged MI6 connection in Radar. If I don't, Young will write about it on Cryptome. "I don't believe you for a minute that you're any different from Haden-Guest," Young rants. "I'm about to get fucked over again. Radar's behind this. Turns out, you're on my shit list. I'm only talking to you to figure out what happened, and what I'm going to make of it. It doesn't look good. Until you find out what this story was and why it was killed, I only have vengeance in my mind against Radar and anyone associated with it."

Radar Online : Inside Cryptome, the website the CIA doesn't want you to see

The Department of Homeland Security is hoping to overcome that limitation by automating the identification of individuals whose behavior suggests they pose a threat via a program dubbed "Hostile Intent."

Pretty soon the "Thought Police" will be able to arrest you for a "Thought Crime".

The software is pretty cool. So is the mood driven PONG. [ Video Link ]

But the spectrum of human emotion can not be lumped into a few categories.

Donnie: Life isn't that simple. I mean who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.
Kitty Farmer: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
Donnie: Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else!

Homeland Security tests automated 'Hostile Intent' detector

In May, London-based Hip Hop artist M.I.A. revealed that she was denied a visa to come work with American music producers on her next album. News reports indicate that the Sri Lankan-born artist was excluded because government officials concluded that some of her lyrics are overly sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Here is some background on MIA:

Level 2 is a bit thornier. Arular's lyrics don't seem to mean much, but they're catchy as all hell: "Blaze to blaze, galang-a-lang-a-lang-a/Purple haze, galang-a-lang-a-lang," she sings on "Galang," her debut single from last year. You notice a few other catchphrases, too, like "freedom fighter," "Pull up the people/Pull up the poor," and "I got the bombs to make you blow/I got the beats to make you bang." Whatever—none of this means much, in and of itself. Intrigued, you go to her incredibly psychedelic Web site (www.miauk.com) and wait for a Flash animation to load. The graphic shown on the screen while you wait is a cute cartoon image of bundled sticks of dynamite, ready to explode. You read her bio and see that she had a rough childhood; she lived in war-torn Sri Lanka as a kid, and her father wasn't around much. He was in the Tamil Tigers, where his nickname was "Arular"—the title of M.I.A.'s album. You don't know much about the Tamil Tigers, besides the fact that they don't seem to be a baseball team, and read on. It looks like she moved to the U.K. with her mother as a refugee a little over 15 years ago. Since then, she's turned her life around, graduating from a top British art school and making a name for herself by playing with loaded images, tearing them out of context and throwing them onto canvases: bright, Warhol-esque screen prints of war and strife, from guns and bombs to tigers.

So is MIA a threat to state security? Somehow, I don't think so.

As far as idealogical slants go, rock n' roll, hiphop, and just about every other form of popular music has been a dangerous threat to the state at one point or another. Not to go into one of those arguments that contains the phrase "slippery slope", but common people.. [ waves his hand ] These are not the threats to the state you are looking for...

Ladies and Gentlemen, just because we killed Mother Russia in the 80's doesn't mean we have to take her place in the uh-oh's...

Musical Threats to The State | Will the Jedi Mind Trick work?

Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I've about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

Ted Nugent chimes in...

Ted Nugent: Gun-free zones are recipe for disaster (CNN)

Congress could not have made itself any clearer: Do not build a whole bunch of conventionally-armed Trident ballistic missiles to go after terrorists, it told the Pentagon. The idea is half-baked, the scenarios you have come up with are far-fetched, and the weapon -- which looks and flies almost exactly like a nuke -- could very well start World War III. To force you to comply, we are cutting your funds for this program by 80%. Go put your thinking caps back on before you ask for more cash. Oh, and get a National Academies study done, too. And a haircut.

HypnomissileBut when it comes to these "Global Strike" weapons, the Defense Department doesn't seem to be able to take no for an answer. According to Inside Defense, "the Navy has budgeted $175 million for the project in fiscal year 2008 -- nearly $50 million more than the service requested in FY-07 and $150 million more than Congress actually appropriated for the so-called Conventional Trident Modification, or 'CTM,' during the current fiscal year." (My spies are giving me slightly different budget breakdowns; but the pig-headed idea is the same.)

In the meantime, I'll leave with you this sage advice, from a DANGER ROOM pal: "I don't know why you bloggers all concluded that the CTM was dead. Nothing is ever dead in this Pentagon...."

DANGER ROOM is getting high marks from me. Good things are happening these days over at Wired Blogs.

Danger Room | Missile Mania Just Won't Die

Austrian police have uncovered a massive child-pornography ring on the Internet, tracking downloads of sexually violent material to more than 2,300 people in 77 countries, a government official said.

"This is the biggest case of child-porn distribution ever discovered in Austria," Interior Minister Guenther Platter told reporters on Wednesday. "This is a very important crackdown, and it is dealing with the most disgusting criminal acts against the most helpless members of society."

"It is amazing that within 24 hours, more than 8,000 hits were recorded from 2,361 suspects from 77 countries," he said.

The BBC has more information:

They were believed to have been shot in Eastern Europe and uploaded to the web in Britain, posted on a Russian website hosted by an Austrian company.

Some of the material was free but the Russian site was charging $89 (68 euros, £45) for access for a "members' only" section.

"A large proportion of policing successes in this area is intelligence led. It usually comes from a tip off from a parent or child," he says.

The codename was "Operation Flo".

Global child-porn ring uncovered - CNN.com

Never Forget | 1-31-07