WikiLeaks Founder May Have Blood On His Hands, Joint Chiefs Chairman Says
At a Pentagon press briefing yesterday, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented on the publication of some 91,000 classified documents by WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange: “Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he think he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” he said. “Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harms way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point. Read the full NPR article here.

So, What is the Definition of a Leak?
A leak is a hole or other opening, usually unintended and therefore undesired, in a container or fluid-containing system, such as a tank or a ship’s hull, through which the contents of the container can escape or outside matter can enter the container. The word “leak” is also used as a verb; matter going through the opening is said to leak. The entry, exit, or exchange of matter through the leak is called leakage, the subject of another disambiguation article. The matter leaking in or out can be gas, liquid, a highly viscous paste, or even a solid such as a powdered or granular solid or other solid particles. Read the full Wikipedia citation here.

Keeping Secrets: Experts Says It’s Best if You Let It All Out (Really??)
Please note that this story is a few years old, but we wanted to highlight it due to the ubiquitous WikiLeaks story. Therapists, counselors, even artists — keepers of conversations off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush — shared some of the secrets of their profession, but nothing that would break confidentiality. They seemed to agree, for the most part, that secrets shouldn’t be kept in intimate relationships, but that the fear of rejection and judgment can sometimes be so deep that people don’t want to risk revealing their true selves. “Friends and family members are notorious for giving all kinds of advice, and if you’re trying to say something when you’re very vulnerable people feel really exposed by people who mean to do well,” said Dana Kovalchick, who has been working in research or as a therapist for about 14 years. Okay, but what about keeping secret information with regards to our nation being at war?? Read more here.

American Leak Detection – The Original Leak Specialists
Perhaps we should call in American Leak Detection to help resolve the WikiLeaks issue? Welcome to American Leak Detection, the “Original Leak Specialists.” Since 1974, American Leak Detection, the “Original Leak Specialists,” has detected nearly 5 million leaks, saving home and business owners billions of dollars in costly repairs. Oh wait, these guys are experts in swimming pool and plumbing leaks — not the leaking of classified information. Anyhow, if you have a leaky swimming pool, we recommend checking them out.

Six Months in a Leaky Boat
First let us say that there are not many songs out there about leaks. However, the music video department of got geoint? dove deep and found a video clip of Split Enz’s “Six Months in a Leaky Boat,” that we thought would be a perfect fit for this week’s FFT post. Oh, and on a side note, Split Enz “split” in the mid-80s to form Crowded House.

Happy Friday!

“Frankly, we all knew this was going to happen,” former CIA Director Michael Hayden said. In a post-WikiLeaks world, he said many he’s spoken to feel burned by the disclosures and want to return to guarding their data.

The intelligence failures that led to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were blamed on government agencies hoarding information instead of sharing it, missing crucial clues that could have headed off al-Qaida’s strikes. Those changes, which reduced this kind of information “stovepiping,” have produced the opposite problem — amassing so much data that officials complain it’s hard to make sense of it or, as the WikiLeaks incident shows, keep it secret.

Intelligence officials and outside experts suggested that agency chiefs may push to limit access to electronic “portals” that have provided growing data access to intelligence officers, diplomats and troops around the world. And others predicted tighter scrutiny by an administration that already has pushed aggressively to investigate and prosecute leakers.

On the other hand, some lawmakers worry that the leaking incident will give the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies an excuse to go back to old ways of holding back some information as “too sensitive” to be shared.

“The intelligence community has a long way to go in information sharing,” said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If these leaks lead to even more stovepipes,” as in limiting access to data to only certain analysts or agencies, “it would be yet another devastating result of this betrayal.”

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., a House Intelligence Committee member who shares those concerns, conducted a closed hearing Tuesday on information sharing.

Eshoo would not detail what went on at the hearing, but she said “it’s the nature of the intelligence community to hoard information.” Despite the WikiLeaks episode, she said she would still push for “more information sharing in the intelligence community, not less.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the leaks endangered the lives of Afghan citizens who have cooperated with NATO-led forces. He called the release of the papers “shocking” and “irresponsible.”

Suspicion for the WikiLeaks document dump centers on Army Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md., who is being detained in Kuwait, charged with “mishandling and leaking classified data.”

Manning was blamed for leaking a classified helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad. Detained after he bragged of providing classified material to WikiLeaks, Manning later was charged with accessing what were described as more than 150,000 classified State Department cables, which have yet to surface.

So far, no U.S. official has directly linked Manning to the WikiLeaks documents.

One U.S. official who has examined some of the WikiLeaks documents said everything he’d seen could have been obtained by Manning by surfing a Defense Department intranet system known as the SIPRNet, for Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

Intelligence analysts like Manning and even troops in the field can access military field reports from Iraq or Afghanistan, or State Department sites, or even some intelligence sites.

The SIPRNet is not new, but access to it has grown since 9/11 to make information available to those who need it as the nation engaged in two wars.

The government has also put more information on SIPRNet by adding more portals giving users access to non-Defense Department information systems such as Intelink, an interagency data-sharing system. Many of these portals require passwords to reach more “top-secret” information, as opposed to the less-restricted “secret” material made available by WikiLeaks.

The U.S. official, who works regularly with these sites, said the defense community already had been fighting the natural inclination of those in the closed field of intelligence to restrict more of the portals by requiring passwords, even before the WikiLeaks incident.

Out on the battlefield, the WikiLeaks episode may also cause a new reluctance to share information. From a sergeant on the ground writing an after-action report following combat, to a supervisor reading the documents, there well could be a new push to leave information out rather than risk having it leaked.

That could make it harder for military headquarters to get an immediate assessment of what’s really happening on the battlefield, some officials say. And it could harm the ability of military historians later to make sense of the war.

But there’s pressure from the other direction as well: No intelligence manager would want to be responsible for holding back information that could connect the dots and prevent a terrorist attack.

Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, predicted agencies would look for ways to tag records through electronic watermarks so their origins, and possible leakers, could be more easily identified.

Hayden, who now works at the Chertoff Group, a Washington-based consulting firm, went further, suggesting pouring resources into “real-time keystroke analysis of government employees,” monitoring everything they type and creating a perpetual cyber-polygraph.

While that already happens at some top-secret facilities, expanding the effort to the hundreds of thousands of people who access the SIPRNet could add millions of dollars to the nation’s already-huge costs of fighting terrorism and two wars.

Read the full AP story here.

DOD Invests in Tomorrow’s UAV and Sensor Features
Dozens of universities are on the receiving end of $227 million over five years in research funding from the Defense Department and will use the money to bankroll exploration of high-tech capabilities, including for sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles. The Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) is responsible for the funding, which is the result of a highly competitive contest held by the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Based on the proposals selected in the fiscal 2010 competition, a total of 67 academic institutions are expected to participate in the 32 research efforts. Read the full Defense Systems article here.

U.S. Air Force May Slow Planned GPS 3 Production Pace
The primary payload for the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation GPS 3 navigation satellites recently was cleared for production even as the service contemplates slowing down the program based on the health of the current GPS constellation. Current plans call for GPS 3 prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver to deliver four satellites per year, with the first slated to launch in 2014, but the Air Force is currently re-evaluating the production rate, said Dave Podlesney, Lockheed Martin’s GPS 3 program director. The health of the existing constellation and launch rate of the current-generation GPS 2F craft — to date just one of 12 of the Boeing-built satellites has been launched — are factors, he said in a July 13 interview. Read the full Space News article here.

Comtech To Protest ViaSat Victory in Blue Force Tracking Competition
Satellite terminal and broadband service provider ViaSat Inc. upset incumbent Comtech Telecommunications Corp. July 21 to win a U.S. Army contract potentially worth $477 million for a satellite-based tracking system, but the losing bidder immediately announced plans to protest the award. The Army chose Carlsbad, Calif.-based ViaSat to provide the satellite terminals, network infrastructure and bandwidth for the Blue Force Tracking (BFT)-2 program, according to a company press release. ViaSat received $37.7 million under the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract’s first task order. Read the full Space News article here.

Boeing’s “Phantom Eye” Joins the Roster of Unmanned Spy Planes
The next generation of spies from on high continue to emerge, with two secretive unmanned planes making their public debuts this week. Engadget calls it a “bowling pin with wings.” I’d say it’s more like a flying maraca.
The Phantom Eye, which Boeing unveiled this week, will take to the skies next year on the power of hydrogen. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) should be able to cruise at an altitude of 65,000 feet. Read the full Discover Magazine blog post here.

UAV Conferences: UAV Caucus Technology Fair
he third Congressional UAV Caucus event for 2010 will be held on Wednesday September 22nd, 2010. The Caucus will host a UAV Technology Fair featuring displays from Industry, Government, Law Enforcement, and more. “This is a great opportunity for the American public to come and get a close look at an exciting, growing technology,” Congressman McKeon said. “After our roundtable discussion on integrating UAVs into the national airspace, I think it will really help Members and the public talk to the operators of these systems about the challenges they face. I’m looking forward to another really great event.” Read the full press release here.

HitachiSoft Selects TerraGo Technologies as Strategic Partner for Geospatial Collaboration Solutions
Hitachi Software Engineering Co. Ltd® (HitachiSoft), a leading global software and IT solutions provider, and TerraGo Technologies®, a leading provider of geospatial collaboration software solutions, have formed a strategic alliance and signed a Master Distributor Agreement under which HitachiSoft resells TerraGo software throughout Asia. Under the terms of the agreement, HitachiSoft now markets via its direct and indirect sales organizations TerraGo Publisher™, TerraGo Composer™, TerraGo Toolbar™, and TerraGo Mobile™ applications that create and interact with GeoPDF® maps and imagery. Under an additional agreement, HitachiSoft has made a strategic investment in TerraGo, and the two companies are jointly developing localized versions of TerraGo software for Asian customers, beginning with a Japanese language version. Read the full TerraGo press release here.

Meet Google’s Space Commander
Google, as you may know, runs a search engine and sells ads. How odd then that Tiffany Montague works at the company. Ms. Montague is the manager of Google’s space initiatives –- overseeing things like sending robots to the moon and ogling Mars. It’s not exactly the stuff that keeps the lights on at the Googleplex, but this type of work seems to make Sergey Brin and Larry Page happy. Unlike many Google employees, Ms. Montague is not an engineer by trade. Rather, she arrived at Google about five years ago, after serving as an officer for the Air Force and working at the National Reconnaissance Office. Ms. Montague’s specialty centered on flying high altitude aircraft and snooping on stuff. Read the full NY Times Bits blog post here.

“We are so excited that we won,” said team member Brendan Stoeckl. “We succeeded because of practice, good data analysis and teamwork.” The international rocketry challenge is the culmination of three separate competitions: the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC), UKAYRoC and the French Rocketry Challenge. Each contest brings together teams of middle and high school students to design, build and launch model rockets. This year the challenge was to launch a rocket that reaches an altitude of 825 feet, stays aloft for 40-45 seconds and returns a raw egg unbroken. As part of their score, teams also had to give an eight minute presentation on their rocket design to a panel of international judges.

Sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry in the U.S.; ADS, Tri Polus Ltd, Space Connections and the Royal Aeronautical Society in the UK; and GIFAS and Planete Sciences in France, the programs are designed to encourage students to pursue careers in aerospace.

“Based on today’s competition, the future of our industry is looking pretty bright,” said Marion Blakey, president and CEO of AIA. “The level of enthusiasm of the participants is phenomenal, and each team deserves congratulations for winning their home competition and inspiring other students.”

AIA created the Team America Rocketry Challenge in 2003 to celebrate the centennial of flight and to generate interest in aerospace careers among young people. The success of the program encouraged UK aerospace industry leaders to create the UKAYRoC in 2007 with similar goals in mind. Last year at the 2009 Paris Airshow, France announced they would compete as well in the international rocketry challenge.

The Raytheon Company, which for the last five years has sent the TARC winning team to Airshows at Farnborough and Paris, is sponsoring all three teams as they tour the airshow and London.

Members of the U.S. team from Penn Manor High School are: Brendan Stoeckl, Jordan Franssen, Nate Bernhardt and Tyler Funk. Their team advisor is Brian Osmolinski.

Members of the UK team from Horsforth Secondary School are: Chris Fogden, Jon Lloyd and Nik Shackleton. Their team advisor is Mike Shovlin.

Members of the French team from College Galilee are: Marine Demellier and Nina Bergande. Their team advisor is Diane Delarocque.

Clapper Most Qualified To Be National Intel Director
With a career spanning 46 years in the intelligence business, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. will be the most qualified candidate ever to assume the nation’s top intelligence job. During the 1990s, he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he created the Defense HUMINT service to institutionalize the Pentagon’s far-flung efforts to recruit and run foreign agents. Just two days after the 9/11 attacks, he became director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the steward of the nation’s network of spy satellites. Read the full NewsMax article here.

Intelligence Nominee’s Contractor Ties Draw Scrutiny
Four months after James R. Clapper left his federal job as head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in June 2006, he joined the boards of three government contractors, two of which had been doing business with his agency while he was there. It was not the only revolving door entered by Clapper, who is now President Obama’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. In October 2006 he was hired full-time by DFI International, which was trying to boost its consulting with intelligence agencies. In April 2007, when he returned to public service as the chief of the Pentagon’s intelligence programs, DFI paid him a $50,000 bonus on his way out the door, according to his financial disclosure statement. Five months later, DFI landed a contract to advise Clapper’s Pentagon office, though company officials do not recall collecting any revenue from the deal. Read the full LA times article here.

Unisys to Compete for Big Geospatial Intelligence Agency Contract
Unisys Corp. said last Thursday it is one of 13 companies selected to compete for up to $1 billion in task orders over five years on the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s Total Application Services for Enterprise Requirements contract. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based information-technology company said it and the 12 other companies will compete to provide integration and deployment services to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and to support the agency’s consolidation to a site in Springfield, Va. Read the full Biz Journal article here.

Assessing WikiLeaks’s Raw Data
You can read harrowing summaries of the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diaries from the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. The Guardian contends that the massive leak portrays the “real war” in Afghanistan as never before revealed, but that’s not quite accurate. Many of the main narrative streams — the sanctuaries found in Pakistan, the collusion between elements of the ISI and the Taliban, civilian causalities (at least 144 separate incidents are recounted here) and subsequent cover-ups — are part of the main narrative of the war. Read the full Atlantic blog post here.

Untouched Meteorite Impact Crater Found via Google Earth
A pristine meteorite impact crater has been found in a remote area of the Sahara desert in southwest Egypt. The crater was originally noticed on Google Earth images, and is believed to be only a few thousand years old. The 45-meter-wide and 16-meter-deep crater, called Kamil, was probably formed by the impact of an iron meteorite, and was first noticed on Google Earth images in 2008 by Vincenzo de Michele, former curator of the Civico Museo di Storia Naturale, in Milan, Italy. Now researchers led by Luigi Folco, meteorite curator at the Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide attached to the University of Siena, have also reported finding the crater in satellite images taken in 1972, and have visited the site. Read the full Physorg.com post here.

Happy Monday!

How to Spy on Your Neighbor
Often times, you’ll find that something or someone in your neighborhood merits attention. More often, you’ll find that fulfilling that requirement is awkward or illegal. Here’s where the spying comes in. Here is an article from WikiHow that will teach you how to effectively spy on your neighbor.

Why Do My Neighbors Spy on Me?
Following is an actual entry on Yahoo! Answers. Pardon the typos – we took it verbatim. Im sitting in the living room and theres a whole directly ahead of me in my backyard where perverts could peek through. Not! I’ve actually seen this old lady peeking through however I do wish it was her daughter who I think is cute but I havent seen her without her sunglasses off. However this one time I was going to feed my chihuahas food and it was dark and I heard a young women’s voice say “turn off the lights” and they came off. Read the full posting here.

Catch Cheating Wife or Husband – Signs of Cheating
One often has to take on a spy-like approach to determine if a spouse is cheating. It’s often not easy to detect, but E-Spy Software, provider of software for spying on children, spouses and the like, has developed a list of tips to determine if you are officially a cuckhold. So, what are some of the signs you ask? Your spouse taking on a sudden interest in a different kind of music is one. So, if your husband or wife has suddenly started listening to Limp Bizkit, I would be worried (for many reasons). Read more here.

10 Good Questions to Ask to Get to Know Someone Really Well
What are good questions to ask to get to know someone really well? In a relationship there first needs to be love, encompassing this love are the strong holds of a relationship and they are trust and respect. Then this will evolve into a natural relationship of getting to know the person. We don’t need to chase or work hard at finding our mate, loves comes when we least expected. Read more from HubPages here.

Who Are You?
I really want to know…enough said. Happy Friday.

Here’s an interesting section of the article:

Other locations include Dulles-Chantilly, Denver-Aurora and Tampa. All of them are under-the-radar versions of traditional military towns: economically dependent on the federal budget and culturally defined by their unique work.

The existence of these clusters is so little known that most people don’t realize when they’re nearing the epicenter of Fort Meade’s, even when the GPS on their car dashboard suddenly begins giving incorrect directions, trapping the driver in a series of U-turns, because the government is jamming all nearby signals.

It is a very detailed article and certainly enlightening for those who don’t work in the IC. To us, though, it is not that eye-opening…perhaps because we work in the IC and we know who we are, and we know where we live and work. Any thoughts an feedback about this article?

In a new report, “Earth Observation: Defense & Security, World Prospects to 2019,” Euroconsult has examined government attitudes toward EO procurement, including customer requirements for IMINT/GEOINT; the use of satellites and UAVs to gather data; and the risks and challenges governments face in using commercial data. An emerging global trend is the establishment of government-centralized procurement bodies to consolidate the needs of defense departments and decide upon the best mechanisms for responding to their IMINT requirements, including building sole-defense proprietary systems; dual-use systems (implying civil and defense government usage); leveraging data through bi/multilateral cooperation agreements; expanding aerial and UAV capacity or purchasing commercial data; or, most likely, a combination of these factors.

These and other issues will also be explored at Euroconsult’s upcoming Symposium on Earth Observation Business September 9-10, during World Satellite Business Week in Paris. This high-profile event is a unique meeting place to discuss market trends and the opportunities and challenges ahead in the growing and changing Earth observation sector. The event will gather over 100 leaders from the EO community including senior executives from satellite operators, manufacturers, government agencies and service providers. Speakers include CEO’s and top executives from DigitalGlobe, Astrium Services, European Union Satellite Center, GeoEye, US NGA, Total, MDA GSI, Group on Earth Observation (GEO), Google, C-Core, UK MoD, KSAT, SPOT-Infoterra, Ball Aerospace, NOAA, and SSTL among others.

For more information on the program, contact:
Ruth Mandeng on +33 1 49 23 75 24 or mandeng@euroconsult-ec.com
See the full program here.

For more information on registration, contact:
Julia Carré on +33 1 49 23 75 28 or carre@euroconsult-ec.com
Online registration is available here.

Adam Keith
Director, Earth Observation
Euroconsult