• Bomb makers who have been active in Afghanistan may already have the ability to produce a “dirty bomb” using knowledge acquired over the internet.
• It is feared that terrorists could transport an improvised nuclear device up the Thames and detonate it in the heart of London. Bristol, Liverpool Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast are also thought to be vulnerable.
• Lord West, the Security Minister, also raised the possibility of terrorists using small craft to enter ports and launch an attack similar to that in Mumbai in 2008, when more than 150 people were killed.
• The Government is so concerned about the threat that it is setting up a command centre to track suspicious boats.
• The terrorism threat level was raised from “substantial” to “severe” in January after the failed attempt to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day.
• Three separate reviews of the country’s ability to prevent a major terrorist attack were published simultaneously yesterday, before an international meeting on nuclear security in Washington next month.
• Downing Street released an update to the National Security Strategy in which it stated that “the UK does face nuclear threats now” and added that there was “the possibility that nuclear weapons or nuclear material [could] fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups”.
• The International Atomic Energy Authority recorded 1,562 incidents where nuclear material was lost or stolen between 1993 and 2008, mostly in the former Soviet Union, and 65 per cent of the losses were never recovered.

Those lost nukes in an attack would be a perfect no-paper-trail-instrument for intelligence agencies working in collusion with other power brokers who want to expand their ubiquitous presence and control. Never mind the non-existent al-qaeda bogey man, if this goes down it wasn’t because of some farmers growing poppies. Plus, John Robb is right, if regional reactionaries want to hurt the US/UK hegemony, the things to blow up are in their own backyard (oil pipelines, electrical and water infrastructure). 

criminalwisdom:

FLASH MOBS GETTING MORE DANGEROUS IN PHILADELPHIA

“Instant rage and flash disruption. Local police and FBI trying to get ahead of this (but the tools they are using suck). Given that protest and political action are so ineffective, this is yet another step towards something much bigger. “
~ John Robb

Instamatic armies. Just add text. Stir.

Image : Riot Scene by Ariasme.

pieto:

Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region. As such, it is primarily a political struggle, in which both sides use armed force to create space for their political, economic and influence activities to be effective.

U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide

download document here

• More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.
• Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.
• “We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”
• Ramos-Lopez’s account had been closed when he was terminated from Texas Auto Center in a workforce reduction last month, but he allegedly got in through another employee’s account, Garcia says. At first, the intruder targeted vehicles by searching on the names of specific customers. Then he discovered he could pull up a database of all 1,100 Auto Center customers whose cars were equipped with the device. He started going down the list in alphabetical order, vandalizing the records, disabling the cars and setting off the horns.

Netwar is a term developed by RAND researchers John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt to describe an emergent form of low intensity conflict, crime, and activism waged by social networked actors. Typical netwar actors might include transnational terrorists, criminal organizations, activist groups, and social movements that employ decentralized, flexible network structures.

****

The high flexibility and reconfigurability inherent in the network structure creates a challenge in maintaining its effectiveness. Arquilla and Ronfeldt identify four areas that affect the strength of a network:

• Organization – what type of network is employed, and to what extent are the actors networked?
• Doctrine – what motivates the use of the network form, what keeps it from falling apart, and how does the organization operate without central leadership?
• Technology – what communication technology is being used, and how?
• Social ties – how much interpersonal trust exists within the network?

With this rubric, the strength of a netwar actor corresponds to how highly networked it is, whether its doctrine sustains the network and guides its members, how effectively technology is used to maintain the network, and how much interpersonal trust there is between nodes in the network.

Networks with many leaders, or no leader, may maintain coordination through a combination of powerful doctrine, ideology, shared beliefs, and/or common interests. This allows all the members of the network to maintain a common objective despite great personal or group autonomy. In other words, this provides an “ideational, strategic, and operational centrality that allows for tactical decentralization.”

***

The following are several examples used to support the argument that there is in fact an emergent netwar.

• Terrorism

Terrorist groups, in the Middle East especially, seem to be adopting flexible, decentralized network structures as part of a shift away from “formally organized, state-sponsored groups to privately financed, loose networks of individuals and subgroups that may have strategic guidance but that, nonetheless, enjoy tactical independence”.

Past terrorist groups did incorporate autonomous cells, but they were largely coordinated in a non-networked manner. Newer terrorist movements, such as al-Qaeda employ less hierarchical, loosely interlinked organizational models. Rather than the rigid bureaucratic structures and nationalist agendas of old terror groups, these new operatives are networked, relying on decentralized decision making with flexible ties between other individuals and radical groups sharing common values.

• Zapatistas

The Zapatista movement began as a seemingly traditional, hierarchical insurgency, but was transformed into an information-age conflict. It has benefited from a diverse network of actors, made up of indigenous communities, non-indigenous middle-class guerilla leaders, and a range of local and transnational NGOs sympathetic to the Zapatista cause. Numerous transnational NGOs networked with local Mexican NGOs that were involved with the marginalized indigenous community and the Zapatista guerillas.

Following setbacks in battle, the guerillas switched tactics and began to exploit the network form, taking advantage of the NGOs connections to mobilize global awareness and support for their reform movement, while putting pressure on the Mexican government. These diverse groups of activists and issue organizations were united by common values and shared goals. The internet, which was in its infancy at the time, also became a key space for networking various groups from around the globe with the Zapatista movement.

• Transnational Criminal Organizations

Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) are empowered by the network form in the sense that it heightens their mobility, adaptability, and their ability to operate transnationally. These transnational networks pose a problem for states operating in a conventional, inwardly focused manner. For instance, cartels in Colombia draw power from their extended transnational network resources, making it difficult for the Colombian government to fight the cartels within the confines of its national boundaries. Thus, networking allows TCOs to easily operate across jurisdictions, evading national law enforcement agencies. Networks also make it more difficult to dismantle a criminal operation, given that there is less emphasis on rigid, central leadership.

(via criminalwisdom)

• Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China.
• The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.
• Nato diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with China among the most active players.
• In the US, an official report released on Friday said the number of attacks on Congress and other government agencies had risen exponentially in the past year to an estimated 1.6 billion every month.
• Robert Mueller, FBI Director, has warned that, in addition to the danger of foreign states making cyber-attacks, al-Qaeda could in the future pose a similar threat. In a speech to a security conference last week, Mr Mueller said terrorist groups had used the internet to recruit members and to plan attacks, but added: “Terrorists have shown a clear interest in pursuing hacking skills and they will either train their own recruits or hire outsiders with an eye towards combining physical attacks with cyber-attacks.”
• He said that a cyber-attack could have the same impact as a “well-placed bomb”. Mr Mueller also accused “nation-state hackers” of seeking out US technology, intelligence, intellectual property and even military weapons and strategies…
• Dr Lewis said that neither the US nor any of its Western allies had formed an effective response to the Chinese threat, which has its origins in a massive boost to Chinese technology ordered by Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader, in 1986. The West’s own cyber offensives have so far been directed largely at terrorists rather than nation states, giving China virtually free rein to penetrate Western systems with its own world-class hackers and increasingly popular Chinese-made components. “You almost have to admire them,” Dr Lewis said. “They have been very consistent in their goals.”

Related:

e9/11 Preparation: Bush Officials Plan Simulated Cyber-Attack

Pentagon-Backed Venture Aims for ‘Google Underground’

• The Department of Defense already has omnipresent eyes in the sky, underwater and, of course, on the ground. It’s only when you start going underground that the surveillance powers of the Pentagon begin to wane — at least until now.
• Just last month, the Pentagon’s risk-taking research arm, DARPA, announced plans for a program called ‘Transparent Earth’. They’re spending $4 million this year on preliminary plans for a digital, 3D map that would display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.”
• But Geospatial Corporation is already doing it. The company, started in 2005 by longtime water-pipeline manufacturer Mark Smith, uses a proprietary gadget called  ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. The company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas.

(nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide!)

• The 11th annual “Mad Scientist” Future Technology seminar from 20 – 23 January 2010 addressed the challenge of blended S&T surprise. Specifically, it brought together a dynamic group of scientists, science fiction writers, futurists, academicians and students from the private sector and government to look into the future and explore ideas about the “blending” of science and technology in ways that might challenge the United States. This executive summary provides an overview of the judgments, insights and implications from that seminar.

Robot wars, out of control nanotech, EMP bombs/guns, dark webs, Mad Scientist futures, all the good stuff.

• WASHINGTON – A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived outside the military headquarters armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind angry, anti-government Internet postings airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks.
• John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was named as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack. Authorities said he’d had previous run-ins with the law.
• “He came here from California,” Keevill said. “We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast.”
• Keevill said he did not know what motivated the shooting: “I have no idea what his intentions were.”
• On a Wikipedia page linked to Bedell, a user by the name JPatrickBedell revealed ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces.
• JPatrickBedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up. Sabow’s family has maintained that he was murdered because he was about to expose covert military operations in Central America involving drug smuggling.
• That posting can be linked to Bedell through court documents matching the shooter’s birth date but Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made “a final determination” that the shooter was the same Bedell.
• The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”
• That same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., involving allegations of cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.

The FederalJack Free Ebooks Archive.

Declassified Federal Docs, FOIA Requests, Fiction and Non-Fiction Books, Survival Manuals and more.

Stock up, 2010 is going to be a bumpy ride.

• A convict in the Netherlands has succeeded in breaking out of prison with an escape worthy of the movies: She tunneled her way out — with a spoon.
• The public prosecutor’s office confirmed Tuesday that the 35-year-old female prisoner had escaped through a tunnel from a prison in Breda in the southern Netherlands.
• The spectacular prison break was made possible because the convict was no longer housed in a regular cell, but in a separate building on the grounds of the detention center where long-term inmates are prepared for their release and are given more freedoms.
• The woman’s tunnel began in a cellar under the building’s kitchen, with its entrance concealed by a removable hatch. According to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, the police are assuming that the fugitive had at least one accomplice, who is believed to have loosened paving stones that were part of a sidewalk next to the detention center, allowing the prisoner to emerge from her tunnel.
• The convict was serving time for murder and still had another 22 months of her sentence to go, according to NOS. She was reported to still be on the loose on Tuesday.

((I think Criminal Wisdom will ‘dig’ this.))