Little Air Marshall Coverage of US Flights – Does it Matter?

From CNN:

Of the 28,000 commercial airline flights that take to the skies on an average day in the United States, fewer than 1 percent are protected by on-board, armed federal air marshals, a nationwide CNN investigation has found.

But does that matter? A CNN blog commenter rightly pointed out:

Is this really a big deal? The post 9/11 threat is no longer hijacking. The reinforced doors and the passengers would not let a similar incident occur. More focus should be on securing cargo and the nation’s ports.

I agree.

I would also suggest these cost effective measures:

• Increase funding the training of pilots to be the last resort armed response
• Create a cadre of local non-federal law enforcement to act as a reserve or air marshal surge force if a situation warrants it.

Terrorist Dry Run on Flight to Milwaukee?

LGF links to an article at the The Aviation Nation that quotes TSA Incident Report #177 re a flight from Washington DC to Milwaukee:

(U//FOUO) Suspicious Activity Onboard Flight to Milwaukee

(U//FOUO) On 24 October 2007, crewmembers aboard a Reagan-Washington National to Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport flight reported to a Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) flying in non-mission status that they noticed suspicious behavior by four passengers.

One of the subjects entered and exited the rear aircraft lavatory three times and failed to comply with crewmembers’ verbal instructions. The FFDO seated himself near this subject to observe his behavior. Shortly afterward, two more of the subjects moved into the aisles and entered both lavatories. After one of the subjects vacated the rear left lavatory, the FFDO searched it, noting that the mirror above the sink was not properly latched.

He exited the lavatory and a fourth subject was waiting second in line with a passenger in front of him. The FFDO offered the fourth subject access to the right lavatory, but the subject declined, claiming the right lavatory was dirty.The FFDO noted the right lavatory was clean, and the subject reluctantly entered the right lavatory and remained there for an extended period of time. (TSA/SD-10-3849-07)

(U//FOUO) TSA Office of Intelligence Comment: Although there is no information that the aircraft was being specifically targeted for a future terrorist attack, the actions of the four passengers are highly suspicious. FFDO confirmation of possible tampering of the lavatory mirror in one of the lavatories could be indicative of an attempt to locate concealment areas for smuggling criminal contraband or terrorist materials. In this case, it appears the left lavatory was the sole area of interest for the passengers. One subject’s excuse that the right lavatory was dirty when it was confirmed to be clean shows the four passengers had a specific, operational objective. Although unconfirmed at this time, this incident has many of the elements of pre-operational terrorist planning.

Source: TSA Suspicious Incidents Report #177

The site also ask an interesting question:

…one wonders when TSA Suspicious Incident Reports #1-#176 occurred — and what information they contain?

DHS Sucks, Part 42

Yikes.

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters. All the while, real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions. In the briefing, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA’s deputy administrator, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency’s response to this week’s California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.” [link]

Break up DHS. Start over.

“Science Fiction in the National Interest”

Excellent news!

Unites States Secret Service as expanded Domestic Security Intelligence Agency? [Updated]

I would be okay if my idea for a DSIA, was actually an expanded and reinvented United States Secret Service. Since it has a history/story, it might be better for organizational cohesion.

What is the DSIA?

DSIA – Domestic Security Intelligence Agency

• MI5-like
• counter-intel activity
• counter-terrorist activity
• intelligence activity
• network in with local law enforcement & contractors
• US Secret Service / Executive Protection activity
• fold in TSA Intell
• Embed DSIA/IC cells in all relevant agencies
• full spectrum profiling by covert security officers
• (include members of that agency in the cell)
• Other posts: here

Update: Related from Judge Posner:

The FBI is a detective bureau. Its business is not to prevent crime but to catch criminals. The Justice Department, of which the FBI is a part, knows only one way of dealing with terrorism, and that is prosecution. (Mr. Mueller is a former prosecutor.)

For prosecutors and detectives, success is measured by arrests, convictions and sentences. That is fine when the object is merely to keep the crime rate within tolerable limits. But the object of counterterrorism is prevention. Terrorist attacks are too calamitous for the punishment of the terrorists who survive the attack to be an adequate substitute for prevention.

Detecting terrorist plots in advance so that they can be thwarted is the business of intelligence agencies. The FBI is not an intelligence agency, and has a truncated conception of intelligence: gathering information that can be used to obtain a conviction. A crime is committed, having a definite time and place and usually witnesses and often physical evidence and even suspects. This enables a criminal investigation to be tightly focused. Prevention, in contrast, requires casting a very wide investigative net, chasing down ambiguous clues, and assembling tiny bits of information (hence the importance of information technology, which plays a limited role in criminal investigations).

The bureau lacks the tradition, the skills, the patience, the incentive structures, the recruitment criteria, the training methods, the languages, the cultural sensitivities and the career paths that national-security intelligence requires. All the bureau’s intelligence operations officers undergo the full special-agent training. That training emphasizes firearms skills, arrest techniques and self-defense, and the legal rules governing criminal investigations. None of these proficiencies are germane to national-security intelligence. What could be more perverse than to train new employees for one kind of work and assign them to another for which they have not been trained?

Every major nation (and many minor ones), except the United States, concluded long ago that domestic intelligence should be separated from its counterpart to the FBI. Britain’s MI5 is merely the best-known example. These nations realize that if you bury a domestic intelligence service in an agency devoted to criminal law enforcement, you end up with “intelligence-led policing,” which means orienting intelligence collection and analysis not to preventing terrorist attacks but to assisting in law enforcement.

MI5 and its counterparts in other nations are not law-enforcement agencies and do not have arrest powers. Their single-minded focus is on discovering plots against the nation. Knowing that arrest and prosecution should be postponed until a terrorist network has been fully traced and its methods, affiliates, financiers, suppliers and camp followers identified, they do not make the mistake that the FBI made last year in arresting seven Muslims in Miami on suspicion of plotting to blow up buildings there, along with the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Update: Related from John Yoo:

It makes less and less sense for one agency, the FBI, to be grappling with Internet-savvy Al Qaeda terrorists while also dealing with drug trafficking, insider trading on Wall Street, copyright violations and industrial espionage.

and

The FBI’s current organizational culture is fundamentally incompatible with foreign intelligence and with war. For instance, the FBI rates and promotes agents based on the number of cases opened and solved. This makes sense if the bureau’s sole mission is solving crimes that have already occurred — but not if the mission is gathering intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks.

The inherent inflexibility of the FBI bureaucracy conflicts with the very heart of the intelligence mission. Intelligence officers must be imaginative to intuit patterns that might signal an unconventional attack on the order of 9/11. They need to act more quickly and decisively than traditional law enforcement officers. The FBI moves slowly, managing its employees by command and control. Criminal prosecution is the FBI’s preferred tool to handle terrorism. It doesn’t think first of double agents, blackmail, bribery or misinformation — all valuable tools in combating terrorism.

Break Apart The Department of Homeland Security – One Possibility [Updated Again]

I have written before (and here) that DHS is a mess and should be re-worked or broken apart.

I wasn’t really sure what to do.

Thomas Barnett had written somewhere something to the effect that he didn’t like DHS because he would like to have seen alot of it in his SysAdmin function. I wasn’t sure what he meant, or what this would look like. I think maybe I do now.

Here is an idea I have kicking around for awhile for breaking apart DHS. I hope it doesn’t have a rearrange-the-deck-chairs-on-the-titanic feel to it.

I will follow up in a few days in another related organizational post entitled “Department of War, Department of Peace”.

DSIA – Domestic Security Intelligence Agency

• MI5-like
• counter-intel activity
• counter-terrorist activity
• intelligence activity
• network in with local law enforcement & contractors
• US Secret Service / Executive Protection activity
• fold in TSA Intell
• Embed DSIA/IC cells in all relevant agencies
• full spectrum profiling by covert security officers
• (include members of that agency in the cell)
• Other posts: here

National Infrastructure Security Authority

• Critical infrastructure security program
• Network in with local law enforcement & contractors
• Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
• Covert Security Activity (includes FAMS function)
• Contract out armed flight deck officer program
• Full spectrum profiling by covert security officers
• DSIA/IC Intell Cell

National Border Management Authority

• Borders
• maritime ports
• Air ports
• Customs
• Create networks
• use covert security agent/profilers who mingle + vegas-style eyes-in-the-sky for security as 3g preventive force
  uniformed checkpoint inspectors (private, working off economic incentives system)
• Cargo entry control
• Covert Security Activity
• Contract out armed flight deck officer program
• Full spectrum profiling by covert security officers
• DSIA/IC Intell Cell

National Emergency Response Authority

• National Police Reserve (can be individual reservists or state based pool assignents)
• National Fire/Rescue/EMS Reserve
• National Emergency Response Civilian Auxiliary
• National Emergency Dentist Auxiliary Program (cross train Dentists as EMT/Nurse Practioners/Paramedics/Nurse)
• Office of Aviation Support
• Create networks for support
• Temp shelters and command posts
• Inside cargo containers
• Military command vehicles
• Emergency aviation assets
• Emergency comm assets
• Civel defense system
• Ebay System For Disasters Prep
• DSIA/IC Intell Cell

Federal Immigration Management Agency

• Manage program who gets in
• Tracks who is here
• Create networks for enforcement
• Out source to bail-bondsmen system
• Financial incentives for local law enforcement
• Backup with U.S. Marshalls Service contract
• DSIA/IC Intell Cell

Homeland Security Support Agency

• Homeland Security Strategic Planning Office
• Homeland Security Research and Technology Support Office (included grant program)
• Homeland Security Basic Program (outsourced program based on a model) Captains-level school
• Homeland Security Advanced Program – perhaps funded/outsourced (Major-Lt. Col)
• National Homeland Security College (advanced schools col-level) (M.A. Homeland Security Studies)
• The above schools can be outsourced programs to university centers-of-excellence
• A few Homeland Security ROTC slots (summer training/internships with a Federal Agency involved with Homeland Security Agency or Coast Guard or local/state police/fire/health/civil-defense)
• Office of Communication Research and Support
• HR (assignment federal, military,local, NGOs, private, overseas)
• Homeland Security Fellows / Senior Fellows program
• Homeland Security Officer Service
• (should serve in federal defense and non-defense positions and local positions, some percentage of jobs should be reserved to them)
• HR system
• Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

Other

• Put Coast Guard back to Department of Transportation (or into a new Department of Armed Forces)
• Special 4gw/counter-Terrorism Court System
• Rico-ish statutes for Counter-4GW
• Purge Military And Prison System Of Wahhabi Chaplains

Updates:

I would be okay if the DSIA, was actually an expanded and reinvented United States Secret Service. Since it has a history/story, it might be better for organizational cohesion.

Update – Additional Ideas from an older post of mine:

• Adopt Dominant Logistics suggestions like: create secure air and port zones, Use retiring ICBMs as launch vehicles for emergency satellites, Field a force of 400 aircraft specific to the mission of global security and support (firefighting, emergency communications hubs, material movement etc.)
• Create a Volunteer Emergency Support Militia of US citizens with special training in firefighting, EMT support, rescue operations, mass disaster event logistics, HAZMAT, dog operations, anti-looting security, Communication technology, civil engineering, hygiene/sanitation operations, etc.
• Geographically disperse Federal Agencies
• create rapid replacement rules for the House and Supreme Court (the Senate is okay as is)
• Create a Separate MI5-like Domestic Security Intelligence Service (DSIS)
• Create Special 4GW/Terrorism Courts
• Real Tradecraft for the Air Marshalls Service. Where should it go? Put it under the Justice Department or make it the Office of Air Security and Intelligence and put it under the DSIS

DHS / Coast Guard Story: 5GW or Incompetence?

Larry Dunbar suggests that a fiasco involving the new U.S. Coast Guard vessles is really a state 5GW action:

If you step back aways from this article, I have posted, it could read, in a 5GW way, the Singapore government sinks US Coast Guard fleet. You see, the Singapore government owns the US shipyards that actually built these ships.

It is an interesting idea.

I suspect DHS is just a screwed up bureaucracy.

I think it is time to start over with DHS.

More Dept of Homeland Security Problems

The Secret Service this time:

First Daughter Barbara Bush had her purse and cell phone stolen as she had dinner in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even though she was being guarded by a detail of Secret Service agents…

What kind of Physical Security where they providing?

Federal Homeland Security is Still a Mess

From SFGate:

For 16 months ending last year, Transportation Security Administration employees tipped off screeners from Covenant Aviation Security that undercover agents were on their way to the airport’s checkpoints to test whether the screeners were properly inspecting passengers and their carry-on luggage, the report said. Despite the charges, the private security firm was rehired two weeks ago with a $314 million, four-year contract at the airport to screen passengers and checked bags. Employees of the firm and the security agency were disciplined as a result of the investigation but none lost their jobs.

This sounds like fraud against the citizens and government of the United States at the least.

Anyone in this chain of command, upto and including the Secretary of Homeland Security should be fired.

It is time to start over.

Weekend Information Security Links

(ht Dark Reading) Anti-Phishing.org has an excellent PDF –> The Crimeware Landscape: Malware, Phishing, Identity Theft and Beyond:

“Crimeware” is software that performs illegal actions unanticipated by a user running the software, which are intended to yield financial benefits to the distributor of the software.

SecuritTeam: Money Mule Recruitment Over IM:

Today was the first time we observed a money mule recruitment happening on instant messaging.

Dark Reading: New Email Malware:

There is less hard data about Haxdoor, which uses a rootkit to hide from the user and from most antivirus applications that might be running on the PC. Once installed, it hunts for passwords for popular Internet services — such as eBay, PayPal, or Web Money — and for popular email clients such as Outlook Express. The attacker can then use the passwords to carry out online fraud or identity theft, Panda says.

Dark Reading: People Aspects of Information Security:

Interestingly, however, organizations are finding it difficult to locate skilled security staff to work on the problem. While the number of security professionals increased 8.1 percent worldwide in the past year, “you can look at any jobs site and see that there are a lot of open positions out there,” Carey noted. As a result, many organizations are giving more responsibility to junior-level staffers and security outsourcing organizations, the report says.

Well duh. Supply and Demand. Pay more for people who have the the skills and more people will get the skills.

Financial Cryptography: E-Tradecraft:

Someone’s paying attention to the tracking ability of mobile phones. Darrent points to Spyblog who suggests some tips to whistleblowers (those who sacrifice their careers and sometimes their liberty to reveal crimes in government and other places)…

Bruce Schneier.com: Chemical Residue Detectors

Schneier on Security and Botnets:

The trick here is to not let the computer’s legitimate owner know that someone else is controlling it. It’s an arms race between attacker and defender.

Botnets are hard to shutdown once established. The best thing, is to have proper controls in place to begin with to prevent takeover and to start forcing infoSec Lawfare (economic incentives) against those who allow their networks to be used.

Security Focus: An Information Security Lawfare Example:

Federal prosecutors charged on Tuesday a 32-year-old Florida man with computer trespass in connection with the creation of a bot network and the targeting of Internet service provider Akamai with a denial-of-service attack more than two years ago.

WatchYourEnd: Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Data Found on Three USB Flash Drives During Drug Raid

…police found classified nuclear data on three USB flash drives during a search of the trailer she shares with another man who was being investigated for drug charges. The information is believed to be classified as Secret Restricted Data which indicates it involves nuclear weapons data and…

WatchYourEnd on Homeland Security and EndPoint Security: here and here:

…Federal Homeland Security officials in Portland, Oregon are trying to find a lost USB thumb drive that may have held personal information on more than 900 current and former employees. This information included your standard “destroy a person’s life” data…

and

…the Port of Seattle is reporting that six computer disks containing personal information for almost 7,000 people who work at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport are now missing. At this time they do not know if the disks were “misplace” or if they have been removed from Port property. No mention of encryption or other endpoint security measures and/or policies.

Security Focus: Fraud Costs

Two American brokerage houses have written off $22 million in fraud losses on their third quarter financials, citing spyware, stolen identities and hacker fraud as the cause.

Security Focus: Spammers continue Lawfare against spam-fighter Spamhause

e360 is going after Spamhaus again, this time trying to use the US Marshall service to seize http://www.spamhaus.org from Tucows, Inc.

Schneier on Security: Links to Paleo-Security Article:

Prehistoric evidence indicates that people have always been concerned with detecting whether others have tampered with their belongings. Early human beings may have swept the ground in front of their dwellings to detect trespassers’ footprints. At least 7,000 years ago, intricate stone carvings were…

Security Humour Spotted by Securiteam:

FLUNKY: Well, he says it’s bad security to create a privileged low-security channel for a lucky few.
CEO: He isn’t a socialist, is he?
…
CEO: Not interested. Let’s cut to the chase. What does he want my password changed to?
FLUNKY: dF3#(~!pk40%L/sD:@
CEO: This is a prank, right?

Securiteam: A Wormboy’s Story

When I came to work the next morning, all you could hear around the office was the sound of mutley, you would hear that laugh at least 3 times once every half hour. There were about 50 computers in the office. The Jig was up. The IT dept. had no clue what was going on, because norton didn’t detect it. Honestly they never had a clue.

Jeff Hayes: Network Access Control:

NAC is a very powerful tool. It allows a network to follow a predefined set of policies. It is policy-based networking at its finest. However, deploying it properly requires some detailed networking and security skills and knowledge.

New Web Site: CAIRwatch

Keeping track of a major Islamofascist Front Group in American…CAIRwatch

Lawfare Example: Anti-Anti-Ismofascist ACLU and Islmofascist Front CAIR Team Up to to Distract/Disrupt Domestic Security Operations in New York

LGF has the details.

Chuck Norris and 4GW

At a recent local Infraguard meeting – the feds (DHS or FBI – both were there – I don’t remember which raised the point) mentioned protecting malls (03-04) post 9/11 based on intelligence.

All I could think of for about the next 10 minutes was Invasion USA (another ref here) with Chuck Norris from the 1980’s best known for a 2 shot grenade launcher.

—

(Originally uploaded toFlickr by locke15)

Politcal Correctness by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service

(Via Reddit) from Vancouver Sun,

The director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Tuesday that the spy agency avoids racial profiling because it is “fundamentally stupid” and does not knowingly use information gleaned under torture offshore because the practice is “morally repugnant.”

Throughout the article it is implied that profiling and torture are nearly the same thing. I wish the definition of torture were explained too, since it appears to some that giving somebody a stern look is torture (or akin to to torture)

I don’t think Canada is going to protect the northern approach to the US. I don’t really think DHS is going to do a good job either. Tick tock, tick tock.

Sergeant Preston where are you we we need you?

DHS And R&D

From Homeland Security Watch:

This story adds to a growing torrent of critical news pieces looking back at DHS’s effort to develop the next generation of aviation screening equipment over the past 2-3 years, and finding unaddressed vulnerabilities. Ultimately, I think there are three complementary explanations for this reality, which have formed something of a vicious circle:

1. DHS has underfunded R&D and procurement of new aviation screening technology.
2. The devices available to DHS have not been robust and/or effective enough for full-scale deployment.
3. DHS has deemed these aviation security threats to be relatively low-risk in comparison with other homeland security threats.

I don’t have much faith in the ability of DHS to execute things like this. Does DHS really needs its own ARPA version? DHS should use prizes and grants to get the effects it wants. It should outsource the management of these as much as possible to DARPA and the NSF.

Fear Of Leaking: Another Reason Why Domestic Security – DHS and FBI – is a Mess

From a Washington Post Article on the thwarted terrorism plot I picked this out:

Until the last hours, details of the British probe were confined to a limited coterie of U.S. Cabinet members and senior officials, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who were involved or have since been briefed. The approach ensured that no advance word of the operation leaked out — but also meant that airlines, airports and even the Transportation Security Administration had only a few hours to ramp up sweeping new measures after being alerted to the threat late Wednesday night.

The Secretary of DHS admits that the DHS and The FBI rank-and-file could not be trusted to keep their mouths shut on even something as important as this.

Jeez.

The Enemy in the Sunlight

Communists, Islamofascists, Anti-Anti-Islamofascists and their Useful Idiots come together in San Francisco as photo documented by the very cool Zombie.

The American Ostriches still do not see.

The Fruits of China’s Espionage Program

From Popular Science:

A spate of recent spying cases opens the lid on China’s aggressive military buildup. What’s most troubling: It is based largely on U.S. technology.

It is time for an American MI5.

FBI Security Problems

From Security Focus:

The network engineer, BAE System’s employee Joseph Thomas Colon, used an FBI agent’s credentials in 2004 to get access to a file that contained the encrypted versions of nearly 38,000 users’ passwords, the Post stated. Using a common security tool available online, he decrypted the passwords and broke into systems that contained information on the Witness Protection Program and details on counterespionage activities, the article stated.

More Details are here and here.

Note the FBI does not run the witness relocation program; nor does it really have National Security mind-set.

The National Security functions of the FBI should be broken out into a separate Domestic Security Intelligence Service.

US Street Gangs Going Cyber

Via Digg:

Some of the country’s most notorious street gangs have gotten Web-savvy, showcasing illegal exploits, making threats, and honoring killed and jailed members on digital turf.

Crips, Bloods, MS-13, 18th Street and others have staked claims on various corners of cyberspace. “Web bangers” are posting potentially incriminating photos of members holding guns, messages taunting other gangs and boasts of illegal exploits on personal Web sites and social networking sites.

Read it all

My New Term: Open Source Espionage

With the actions of the New York Times fresh in my mind, and while driving home listening to some leftists on NPR re-assure themselves, I yelled out a phrase – Open Source Espionage.

Open Source Espionage (OSE?) will be used in 4GW (and 5GW…though I haven’t thought about this in that context).

Consider this clear espionage scenario:

• A US Treasury department official…
• smuggles out the details of a legal but secret US Intelligence Program on a USB drive…
• Passes it off to Abu Quisling who “pays him for his expenses and risk”…
• Who shoves it up his ass…
• Before flying to Europe…
• To hand it off to the brothers…

We would call the above espionage – without a doubt.

Just like the methods of war-fighting change in 4GW, it appears that some new intelligence techniques now exists.

In the New York Times instance they, as anti-anti-islamofascists, have committed espionage against the US, but delivered the intelligence through a 4GW-ish method – public electronic information and media publications.

The anti-anti-islamofacists I listened to on NPR (and I presume elsewhere), are claiming freedom of speech or freedom of the press in the support of this successful espionage operation against the US. Those freedoms are about political speech and political media publishing. I don’t think it is meant to be an absolute right to say or print anything (slander, libel, death threats, orders to commit crime, etc.). Espionage by passing information via words and newsprint, is espionage just as if the information has been left at a dead drop on a microdot or smuggled out up Abu Quislings ass in a USB Thumb Drive.

The US leaders and public don’t really understand 4GW or how public policy and national security activity are effected by it (I am still gaining my understanding of it). The US leaders and public are still living in a mostly 2GW (slightly 3GW) world-view. They don’t really understand the changes wrought by 4GW (and the emerging 5GW). Perhaps, we have also gone soft a bit with out success over the last 25 years.

So what can be done to counter Open Source Espionage? I have a few ideas (very rough):

• update the espionage act
• educate relentlessly the U.S. leaders and public about 4GW and islamofascism
• Create a counter-terror/4GW court/legal system with pro-American Nation Lawfare opportunities
• Long-Term: need to do something about the untangling cohesivnss of the American Nation and Western Civilization
• Short-Term: What do do about the Anti-anti-islamofascist and the 4GW / proto-5GW Fifth Column? Islamofascist supporters could be sued under R.I.C.O. (Perhaps a 4GW Rico-ish legislation needed including US Lawfare Options both criminal and civil)

Update: Related info on Hot Air

Toward A Smart Power Grid for Homeland Security

Via Digg:

The researchers need to design a system that stands up to weather. They need to design sensors that can accurately monitor the power grid’s electrical and mechanical characteristics. They need to find a way to monitor the area around electrical equipment for suspicious activity. They need to develop wireless communication networks so the sensors can send comprehensive data from far-flung areas to control centers. They need to design a diagnosis algorithm to accurately determine fault conditions and predict faults. They need to design a decision algorithm to reconfigure the power network to prevent or alleviate cascading failures. And they need to find ways to get electricity to the sensors because the electrical lines they’re monitoring carry a different kind of power.

Somani said the researchers are making good progress on developing a prototype system.

read more

A Smart Grid would be more efficient and more resilient to disruption. It is an important park of a future Homeland Security Network (replace the current Bureaucracy driven DHS scheme).

What Would a 5GW Civil War for the American Nation Look Like?

I write about the anti-anti-islamofascists here:

If the citizens and residents of the USA are not mostly united about the idea of the American Nation and Western Civilization we can not hope to win the combo 4GW/5GW war that we face against the Islamofascists. How large is the internal enemy: 10% / 20% / 30% or more of the population? In 5GW fashion, are they over-represented in vital institutions (like the media, educational services, the state department, the CIA even)?

and

Can the enemy collapse us from within by leaking our secrets (to preserver their active fighters and the infrastructures of islamafascisim) while eliminating our collective will to fight/resist/win, and even gently dissuading us over time of the very notion that the American Nation and Western Civilization is worth preserving?

and here:

To the anti-anti-islamofascists, the war was a mistake, we are loosing it, and the best thing we can do to regain our prominent position in the world (now lost) is pull out of Iraq (and cease support of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and of any country whose arab/islamic leaders are friendly to the USA) as quickly as we can (they had a government for 6 months in Iraq now after all). We have learned our lesson that the US cannot and should attempt military action overseas unless it is in no way in the national interest (besides the true purpose of the defense establishment is pork barrel spending at home).

I am reminded of the Fonte’s idea of an ideological war for western civilization:

Talk in the West of a “culture war” is somewhat misleading, because the arguments over transnational vs. national citizenship, multiculturalism vs. assimilation, and global governance vs. national sovereignty are not simply cultural, but ideological and philosophical. They pose Aristotle’s question: “What kind of government is best?”

In America, there is an elemental argument about whether to preserve, improve, and transmit the American regime to future generations or to transform it into a new and different type of polity. We are arguing about “regime maintenance” vs. “regime transformation.”

The challenge from transnational progressivism to traditional American concepts of citizenship, patriotism, assimilation, and the meaning of democracy itself is fundamental. If our system is based not on individual rights (as defined by the U. S. Constitution) but on group consciousness (as defined by international law); not on equality of citizenship but on group preferences for non- citizens (including illegal immigrants) and for certain categories of citizens; not on majority rule within constitutional limits but on power-sharing by different ethnic, racial, gender, and linguistic groups; not on constitutional law, but on transnational law; not on immigrants becoming Americans, but on migrants linked between transnational communities; then the regime will cease to be “constitutional,” “liberal,” “democratic,” and “American,” in the understood sense of those terms, but will become in reality a new hybrid system that is “post-constitutional,” “post-liberal,” “post-democratic,” and “post-American.”

Maybe I am just in a pessimistic mood tonight. I can’t help but think I am seeing 5GW shadows here.

The American Nation has had two bloody civil wars already (this one and this one) – we won’t have another. We have arguably had a third civil war that was a mostly peaceful 4GW Civil War (that is a debate for another post).

It is unlikely that a third bloody civil war will take place.

I think I sense the beginning of the fourth civil war – a 5GW Civil War. The institutions of the nations are being slowly subverted (Boiling the Frog style) to call for the rejection of the American Nation’s DNA from which it originated. The “other side” is both sub-national and “trans-national”. It is purpose-driven with long time-frames. It uses the institutions of the US against the US.

Okay, let me think more about this. While this might be a flash of 5GW insight, it might just be conspiracy mongering and paranoia (the excellent built-in defense of 5GW movements).

Sunday Night Links

Phatic Communion on Al Qaeda and 5GW: A Possible 5GW Operation is discussed. The article shows that well executed 5GW will cause Analysis Paralysis among those attempting to investigate.

TDAXP links to a LOL version of U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday "sung" by George W. Bush.

Via Michelle Malkin: Saddam and Al-Qaeda ties

Ayatollah's grandson calls for US to overthrow Iran

Lost WW2 submarine USS Lagarto found

North Korea prepares long-range missiles

More DHS Border Suckiness:

Homeland Security, the $40-billion-a-year agency set up to combat terrorism after 9/11, has been given universal jurisdiction and can hold anyone on Earth for crimes unrelated to national security — even me for a court date I missed while I was in Iraq helping America deter terror — without asking what I had been doing in Pakistan among Islamic extremists the agency is designated to stop. Instead, some of its actions are erasing the lines of jurisdiction between local police and the federal state, scarily bringing the words "police" and "state" closer together. As long as we allow Homeland Security to act like a Keystone Stasi, terrorism will continue to win in destroying our freedom.

Heh – "Keystone Stasi"

Corporate Espionage

Introducing WikiCalc

The Math behind tv's deal or new deal (more interesting then the show)

Using social engineering to strike back at a small time con man

Things not said to a poker table asshole

Yum!

US Missile Defense Agency info (ref1, ref2)

Via TV Squad: Lost Theories

Selfish Biocosm

Merchant Marine Academy (ref1, ref2)

As I type this, I am viewing a South Park rerun on Comedy Channel. It is the Hybrid/Smugness episode from the season that just ended. Something has been changed. Whatever song was originally used during the opening scene, it has been replaced. The new song is a big band version of Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine (Artie Shaw, I think; maybe Benny Goodman though). I wonder why? I love Porter's music and Begin the Beguine is wonderful, but it doesn't fit the episode. I can't find anything on the South Park website, so maybe my memory is faulty.

Housekeeping: Adding Homeland Security Watch Blog to Blogroll

I stumbled upon and have been going through blog Homeland Security Watch (http://www.hlswatch.com). It seems to be well written and covers important domestic security issues all in one place.

I have added its RSS feed to my RSS reader. I will most likely have posts over the weekend as I go through all of the existing entries at the site.