Special Report – Covert Tracking and Location Systems

SPECIAL REPORT

Covert Tracking and Location Systems

Challenges faced by Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems Solutions – the impact of Counter-Measure and Financial Constraint Covert tracking and location systems in military intelligence The information revolution and military intelligence: too much information Covert Tracking and Counter Measures post 9/11 and the Global War on Terror: analysis in the age of excess information The Open Sources wakeup call: Intelligence confronts Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikileaks

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Published by Global Business Media

INTELLIGENCE LED

INTELLIGENCE LED Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems and Solutions

Delivering intelligence solutions to military, federal, security and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

SPECIAL REPORT

Covert Tracking and Location Systems

Contents

Challenges faced by Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems Solutions – the impact of Counter-Measure and Financial Constraint Covert tracking and location systems in military intelligence

Foreword

The information revolution and military intelligence: too much information

Martin Richards, Editor

Covert Tracking and Counter Measures post 9/11 and the Global War on Terror: analysis in the age of excess information The Open Sources wakeup call: Intelligence confronts Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikileaks

Sponsored by

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Challenges faced by Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems Solutions – the impact of Counter-Measure and Financial Constraint

3

John Kirtland, Group Sales Director, Datong plc Neil Clements, Head of New Product Introduction, Datong plc Published by Global Business Media

Trusted relationships respond to fresh challenges Published by Global Business Media

Investment in new technology provides best end user solutions

Global Business Media Limited 62 The Street Ashtead Surrey KT21 1AT United Kingdom

Choice of communications infrastructure is key to operational capability

Switchboard: +44 (0)1737 850 939 Fax: +44 (0)1737 851 952 Email: info@globalbusinessmedia.org Website: www.globalbusinessmedia.org Publisher Kevin Bell Business Development Director Marie-Anne Brooks Editor Martin Richards Senior Project Manager Steve Banks Advertising Executives Michael McCarthy Abigail Coombes Production Manager Paul Davies For further information visit: www.globalbusinessmedia.org The opinions and views expressed in the editorial content in this publication are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of any organisation with which they may be associated.

Material in advertisements and promotional features may be considered to represent the views of the advertisers and promoters. The views and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily express the views of the Publishers or the Editor. While every care has been taken in the preparation of this publication, neither the Publishers nor the Editor are responsible for such opinions and views or for any inaccuracies in the articles.

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Inter-operability capability will drive future developments Products that work in challenging environments The world continues to change and Datong solutions are changing with it

Covert Tracking and Location Systems in Military Intelligence

6

Marushka Dubova, Defence Correspondent

The U S State Department value system… “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” December 7 1941 – Chief of Staff General Marshall had gone riding The role of the National Security Agency

The Information Revolution and Military Intelligence: too much information

8

Don McBarnet, Staff Writer

Covert Tracking and Counter Measures post 9/11 and the Global War on Terror: Analysis in the Age of Excess Information

9

Meredith Llewellyn, Lead Contributor

The Open Sources wakeup call: Intelligence confronts Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikileaks

10

Marushka Dubova, Defence Correspondent

The questionable impact of Facebook and Twitter The shift in emphasis from counter insurgency options to counter terrorism

References

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

Foreword

T

HE COVERT world of intelligence is vital to good military and political decision-making. The history of warfare is littered with examples of where the intelligence was wrong and men and women paid in blood and treasure. The series of articles in this Report traces the emergence of the intelligence community’s capabilities through the twentieth century to the twenty first and looks at the implications of some of the latest developments.

The Report opens by looking at the challenges faced by the user and supplier of Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems Solutions in responding to changing operational methods, and the use of new technology when placed against a background of financial constraint. It goes on to highlight the needs for suppliers to work closely with users to identify applications for new technologies and to understand potential countermeasures. Key to developing effective next generation solutions are four main elements: communications technology, inter-operability, mission life and miniaturization.

There are a number of emerging themes. The stifling role of secrecy and bureaucratic regulations that make delivering the hard won analysis to the commanders that need to know, impossibly difficult. There is the neverending theme of the need to adapt to new technologies to deal with rapidly changing new threats. There is the drive to handle very large amounts of data adroitly. Not least of all, the information revolution and ubiquitous computing, which was barely acknowledged by the intelligence community before the social networking phenomenon, has left intelligence again looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. The recent hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee in Congress illustrates this perfectly.

However, for the military community, dealing with insurgents or terrorists or government forces produces a recurring demand for practical solutions that deliver the images (IMINT), as well as the other types of intelligence they need in real time to assess the opposing force, to note their weaponry, its location and numbers.

The Report examines, also, the implications of the social networking phenomenon. Julian Assange, seen by some as a threat himself, notes the way that Facebook is a two-edged sword, as it can be used not only to organize dissent but also by authoritarian government regimes to suppress unrest.

In an ironic end piece, General Petraeus, Commander in Chief ISAF, in an interview with the Financial Times earlier this year, describes the increasing reliance on intelligence and offers as illustration the rapid increase in the use of the simplest technological solutions – blimps (balloons) to hover over battlefields to capture images.

Martin Richards Editor

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

Challenges faced by Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems Solutions – the impact of Counter-Measure and Financial Constraint

INTELLIGENCE LED

John Kirtland, Group Sales Director, Datong plc Neil Clements, Head of New Product Introduction, Datong plc

In this article we look at the challenges faced by the user and supplier in responding to changing operational methods and the use of new technology when placed against a backdrop of financial constraint.

D

atong has been at the forefront of the development of advanced covert tracking and location systems for over 30 years, making sure our clients continue to be Intelligence Led. This success has been accomplished through the adoption of a very simple business model comprising three key elements: • Close, trusted relationships with experienced and knowledgeable users around the world to understand how they are responding to fresh challenges and where technology an play a part in complimenting their operational techniques.

• Investment in new technology research to ensure we bring to the user the best options in terms of user interface, miniaturisation, communications technology, inter-operability and mission life.

• Creation of products which are designed to work in challenging environments and that also facilitate the process of through life support and product upgrade in challenging financial times.

Trusted relationships respond to fresh challenges The nature of our customers’ work is varied but is typically categorised by a couple of common features, namely “the activity cannot be compromised” and “expect surveillance aware targets and anticipate counter-measures”. There is a continuing cycle of re-development that our

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clients undertake driven by each fresh wave of operational activity. The skills of our own (Blue) forces and enemy (Red) forces develop over time and so it is no surprise that as the life-cycle for available technology shortens, the operational tactics used also change at pace.

It is this constantly evolving cycle that drives

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

As these new technologies now tend to be led by commercial developments, it has also become easier for counter-measures to be put in place.

much of the work undertaken by Datong in providing new solutions to this ever-changing environment. We work closely with our users to identify applications for new technologies and to understand potential counter-measures. With each new wave of technology that is introduced blue force elements are well positioned to exploit those advancements to aid mission success.

As these new technologies now tend to be led by commercial developments, it has also become easier for counter-measures to be put in place. Therefore, it is important that solutions working independently from publicly available technologies are also available.

as possible and invests heavily in the research aspects of each new wave of communications infrastructure, including RF based, cellular, satellite and others.

Inter-operability capability will drive future developments We see a growing need for disparate systems to have the capability for inter-operability.

For various operational reasons we don’t believe that all systems will be inter-connected at all times. The key will be to provide the capability for inter-operability.

Investment in new technology provides best end user solutions With a detailed knowledge of our customers’ requirements, we are well placed to use our multi-million pound investment in technology know-how to develop next-generation solutions to meet their needs. These combine the best in terms of: • Communications technology – using the best in public and non-public infrastructure solutions.

• Inter-operability – providing inter-connectivity and data transfer between vendor systems will be key requirements for many customers, • Mission life – implementing new and advanced techniques to maximise mission life.

• Miniaturisation – small is beautiful.

We’ll consider just the first two of these requirements in more detail in this article.

Choice of communications infrastructure is key to operational capability The correct selection and appropriate use of the communications infrastructure will be led by the operational approach and the operating arena.

Datong’s solutions provide our clients with a wide choice of communications infrastructure allowing them to operate in all arenas. We mentioned earlier the cycle of development as Blue and Red Forces develop their methods in response to each other.

One specific area is the use of Cellular- based solutions. Their introduction saw a large take up through easy-to-deploy systems. This has been followed by a move towards alternative methods (such as RF based systems) as the use of GSM jamming technologies has become readily available and is being deployed with increasing frequency by surveillance-aware targets.

The lesson here is that “easy-to-deploy” can often equate to “easy-to-compromise”. A range of solutions is needed to allow for the varying arenas in which our clients operate as well as the different stages of an operation. Datong’s approach is to seek to use as wide a capability 4 | WWW.DEFENCEINDUSTRYREPORTS.COM

The provision of inter-operable systems is an area of development that Datong fully supports and is already introducing within its latest products. This is an area that will require as much “political” work as “development” work. Arguably, all systems can be made to work with each other. The defining characteristics of such systems will be the result of a collaborative effort between users and industry in order to move this forward. There are strong arguments in favour of this approach, not least of which is the financial aspect of running multiple parallel, proprietary systems. They bring increased capital and through-life support costs that will be under scrutiny in future spending reviews.

The move from multiple proprietary systems to a more “open” environment will require the alignment of the “political” channels associated

SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

INTELLIGENCE LED

The move from multiple proprietary systems to a more “open” environment will require the alignment of the “political” channels associated with this change of approach. with this change of approach, in a manner that has been experienced elsewhere in public and private domains. This change will require a phased approach as user and industry work towards a common framework for future developments, to create systems that are increasingly inter-operable whilst, at the same time, maintaining commercial competition.

Products that work in challenging environments Datong has been built on a foundation of providing robust, high quality equipment that can withstand the rigours of operational use around the world. With this as a backdrop, we are developing and introducing new solutions on a regular basis as the speed of core technology

innovation moves apace with the evolution of operational methods.

The opportunity that we are now managing with our clients is the process of new technology introduction and building with them the financial models under which we can both proceed. We know that our end users will be under some financial constraint while at the same time facing continued pressure for operations at home and overseas. As we’ve seen earlier, these new challenges will require the adoption of new methods, supported by the introduction of new technology. How to do this when the purse strings are drawn tighter? The solution lies in providing a number of options that can be tailored to each end user as they develop their own set of priorities. Datong is positioned to take a “wider view” of new product introduction, through-life support and technology refresh. This will enable our clients to maximise their existing solutions and to take advantage of the system developments which incorporate the latest technologies.

The world continues to change and Datong solutions are changing with it

INTELLIGENCE LED Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems and Solutions Delivering intelligence solutions to military, federal, security and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

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The continuing evolution of operational requirements is driving a review of methods and technologies used. Whilst the detail of this technology cannot be discussed in this public article, the areas of communications infrastructure and inter-operability are priorities in the drive to provide systems that are “Intelligence Led”. Datong’s solutions balance the technology demands of the user with an understanding of the financial and through-life support aspects that will be subject to greater scrutiny in the coming years.

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

Covert Tracking and Location Systems in Military Intelligence Marushka Dubova, Defence Correspondent

“Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it…There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment…

You had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

George Orwell “1984” written in 1945

In the 1930s, as the need to unencrypt and monitor Japanese secret diplomatic cables became more intense while war threatened again, three tendencies appeared which were to handicap the emerging intelligence forces for the next half century.

T

his image of covert surveillance painted

by George Orwell in 1945, foreshadows a covert state surveillance capability that was much feared by people living in countries under Soviet communism in the post World War Two period. Today, more than half a century later, after an internet and social media revolution which has put an internet capable laptop and a smart phone into the hands of many, if not most, people in Western Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and South Asia, the reality of uncontrolled state covert surveillance is still feared but perhaps for different reasons.

The U S State Department value system…“gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” The originator of the business of secret surveillance and the vast institution of what is now the National Security Agency in the United States was an American, Herbert Yardley, who during the First World War, started work secretly deciphering coded cables for the State Department. He went on to form a small team of cryptologists who deciphered intercepted cables passing to and from other nations, and worked in 1918 at the American Commission to the Peace Conference in the Hotel Crillon, in Paris, France.1 With an expanding coterie of gifted Japanese and other language specialists the fledgling Signals Intelligence Service was launched, developing capabilities to intercept and decipher cables and encrypt others. There was an ethos that nothing was “indecipherable”.

Yet their cryptanalysis skills were challenged by a State Department value system which claimed, “gentlemen do not read each other’s

6 | WWW.DEFENCEINDUSTRYREPORTS.COM

mail”. This was further enforced by Secretary of State Stimson’s ban on the interception of communications and the 1934 Communications Act. In the 1930s, as the need to unencrypt and monitor Japanese secret diplomatic cables became more intense while war threatened again, three tendencies appeared which were to handicap the emerging intelligence forces for the next half century. First, the stifling need for secrecy to the extent that this prevented the key message that had been decoded being given to decision makers who needed to act on the intelligence.

Second, the competitive inter-service rivalry between the US army, navy and air force that prevented lateral communication of intelligence to the benefit of the war effort. And thirdly, the slow appreciation of the need for urgent transmission of intelligence analysis to client departments without excessive secrecy and bureaucratic procedure.

December 7 1941 – Chief of Staff General Marshall had gone riding These weaknesses were best illustrated by the catastrophic failure on 7 December 1941 of the newly decrypted intercepted message about the Japanese Government’s intention to break off negotiations with the American Government at 1.00pm on 7 December. This rupture constituted the penultimate act before war, and this new and dangerous development had to be transmitted urgently to the Chief of Staff, General Marshall. Officers took hours to locate General Marshall, who had gone riding in Washington on Sunday morning, several

SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

hours ahead of Hawaii time. He insisted that he had to read the message on paper rather than receive the message on an open phone line.

He understood the impact and sent the message through the War Department’s Secret Message Center, where the communications officer, having said it would be delivered in 30 minutes, had it placed in a pigeon hole while the consequences of a failed naval response and evasive action became history.

The events of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had already begun to unfold. Four U.S. Navy battleships were sunk and the four others present were damaged. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,402 men were killed and 1,282 wounded.2 As a direct result of this attack the United States declared war on Japan. Following the untimely delivery of critical communications intelligence, Secretary of State Stimson re-prioritized intelligence and the Signals Intelligence Service was expanded. At the same time, a separate branch the War Department’s Military Intelligence Service was set up with fewer restrictions on interception. Such was the success of the re-organization that, as Christopher Andrews3 quotes in his book: “Dwight D. Eisenhower, briefed personally by Churchill in June 1942 became a SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) enthusiast. And in July 1945 he declared that ULTRA had been ‘of priceless value” to his conduct of the war.”

However, the record was more mixed in the early Cold War period where Andrews quotes the truth of the Eisenhower dictum that intelligence on “what the Soviets did not have was often as important as information on what they did”. It was the information from spy satellites and SIGINT that gave the West the power to control and then to limit the nuclear arms race through SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreements.

The role of the National Security Agency From the wartime machinery of military intelligence, the National Security Agency, now numbering several thousand staff, was instituted on 11 April 1952 and was eventually given a new headquarters at Fort George G. Meade between Baltimore and Washington DC. It is described as having had a valley of antennae, which cannot be overflown4 and many other capabilities for eavesdropping on communications. From the Second World War until 1989, the primary responsibility of the NSA was to monitor the Soviet Union and its satellites through the Cold

The overpowering institutional culture of

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secrecy to prevent Soviet counter espionage had a crippling effect on the flexibility and creativity of the organization.

War. Here the emphasis was on assessing the Soviet Union’s military capability. The overpowering institutional culture of secrecy to prevent Soviet counter espionage had a crippling effect on the flexibility and creativity of the organization. Some argue that this was a contributory cause of the failure to deter the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia in 2001. Bruce Berkowitz, a former CIA officer who worked on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as a consultant to most of the agencies within the US Intelligence Community, described the paradigm shift in thinking that the intelligence community had to perform.5 “US intelligence agencies were originally designed to combat Soviet and communist activities worldwide. But whereas the Cold War enemy was big and noisy, today’s terrorist organisations have “small signatures” and a “low signal-to-noise ratio”. That is, they can hide easily and blend into the activities of normal societies.

The Iraq terrorist training camp reported to exist at Salman Park consists of just a few buildings, and the bomb factory of Ahmed Ressam in 1999 was just a motel room.”

Berkowitz argues that, in his view, the lessons learned from 9/11 were the acknowledgment of the failure of HUMINT (human intelligence), in the context of an over reliance on IMINT (image intelligence) and SIGINT because of an American over-infatuation with new technologies.

He also saw the CIA as “tired, aimless and bureaucratic” with not enough officers who speak the local languages and a willingness to go on operations. He argues for an intelligence service that can think radically and “see plausible new threats” because they are the ones apt to do the most damage; an argument that many would agree with today.

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

The Information Revolution and Military Intelligence: too much information Don McBarnet, Staff Writer

intelligence needs to be both contrarian, leaning against traditional wisdom and attentive to the longer term.

T

oday’s commander in Afghanistan or elsewhere on the receiving end of a stream of digital images from satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles has an issue unrecognizable to his 20th century compatriot. He has a “surfeit of information of uncertain reliability”6, as was stated by Gregory Treverton, a former official in the executive branch of the U.S. government with experience as the vice chair of the National Intelligence Council and as a National Security Council staff member: “Intelligence has been dominated by collection and now the pendulum needs to swing towards processing and analysis”7.

Treverton’s view is trenchant and profound.

In a counter insurgency campaign, he remarks on the familiar blurred line between criminals and terrorists. There are also the “dispossessed who can meet kindred spirits in chat rooms” who may be neither or both. He notes the warfighters’ concern with ELINT(electronic intelligence) not the content of conversations, but signals identifying technical characteristics or units or weapons and their location” 8 .

Warriors trust pictures, but need real time information which is accurate. He highlights the requirement for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that can loiter over targets for 24 hours or more, rather than satellites which whizz by targets at thousands of miles an hour, spending only minutes watching any given point of interest to the warriors. This distinction between the images from satellites and drones brings into focus the need to balance the trade-off between the higher resolution of the image from drones and the wider search area from satellites. In an age of constant budgetary constraints he argues that UAVs may be cheaper than military satellites and that the type of imagery generated by commercial firms with their own satellites can rival the output from military installations. Most importantly, Treverton puts the case for his own bias, that intelligence needs to be both contrarian, leaning against traditional wisdom and attentive to the longer term, while time horizons of Washington and

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the military become shorter and shorter.

Perhaps the need to analyse data with insight and depth is at odds with the trend to use commercial firms to deliver military information on the battlefield, where the need is to deliver the data required rather than reveal uncomfortable truths from left of field.

SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

Covert Tracking and Counter Measures post 9/11 and the Global War on Terror: Analysis in the Age of Excess Information

INTELLIGENCE LED

Meredith Llewellyn, Lead Contributor

T

oo much information is not a new problem for the intelligence industry, but it constantly needs addressing in new ways.

Bruce Berkowitz, a Scholar-in-Residence at the Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, the “think tank” attached to the CIA’s training center for analysts, was brought in to look at the way that the CIA and the National Security Agency processes data and how this might mitigate against coming up with timely analysis needed by the military and policy making community. In 2002 he spent time looking at how the analysts worked and used the computer terminals and software available to them. His results were revealing: “DI analysts work in an IT environment that is largely isolated from the outside world. If they need to do work that is classified in any way, there is virtually no alternative other than to use the CIA’s own, restricted system. DI analysts can use their unclassified computer connected to the Internet, but this is suitable only for material that is completely unclassified.

There is no middle ground.”9 Returning to the issues that had handicapped intelligence in the 20th century, the need for security was above all else.

“Security is probably the single most important factor that prevents the DI from applying information technology more effectively. Security is absolutely essential for intelligence, of course.

The problem is that, when it comes to IT, the CIA’s approach is not “risk management,” but “risk exclusion.”

This risk exclusion to the benefit of total security has a deadening effect on the insight that can be gained from the analysis. The ubiquitous laptop of the commercial world can be encrypted and sensitive data can be hidden behind strong passwords and firewalls as a path to risk reduction rather than risk exclusion.

Berkowitz, like others such as Treverton, argues against giving in to the challenges of “compartmentation” by which neighbouring

Sensitive data can be hidden behind strong passwords and firewalls as a path to risk reduction rather than risk exclusion. departments on related analytical areas such as Counterterrorism Center, the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Intelligence need to work closely together using the same databases and IT architectures. The ability of the analysts is not in question but the regulations on the way they work limit their creativity to develop “killer apps” that might simplify their work and cut costs, and at the same time provide the analytical information that is so badly needed: “By not encouraging analysts to use information technology more creatively, the DI is hurting its future. Most “killer apps” – unusually powerful and effective software application developments – originate from users, not programmers. The first step in developing software is recognizing that a need exists, and users are the ones at the scene who know what they need. That is why the best source of new ideas for relevant IT will most likely be the DI itself, not Silicon Valley.”

He highlights the need for intelligence to become a more agile activity where ad hoc teams can be put together overnight to meet new intellectual challenges without waiting for computers to move and rewiring to take place before teams can be put together. In the face of the open sources revolution in analysis and the active operations of Moore’s law that sees dramatic change in computing power changing at least every two years, this recommendation is even more relevant today than when he wrote it 5 years ago.

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The Open Sources wakeup call: Intelligence confronts Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikileaks Marushka Dubova, Defence Correspondent

”There was a good deal of intelligence about Tunisia [but] virtually nothing about Egypt…So there was, to my knowledge, no real warning, either to the White House or, certainly, to the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Congress.” She added that even though the protests apparently were organized in public on web sites and social media platforms, “I don’t believe there was any intelligence on what was happening on Facebook or Twitter or the organizational effort to put these protests together. I would call it a big intelligence wakeup. Open-source material has to become much more significant in the analysis of intelligence.”

Senator Diane Feinstein, Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee February 2011, NBC News

In June 2010, during the Iranian presidential elections, supporters of the opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, protested the election result via Twitter.

T

his astonishing statement by Senator Diane Feinstein, Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2011 a few weeks after revolutions in Tunisia, and then Egypt, ousting long-standing leaders Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, is a snapshot of the intelligence community not dealing with new social networks.

For analysts monitoring the massive amount of data generated by social networking sites is a headache: there are 600 million Facebook accounts, 190 million Twitter accounts and 35,000 hours of YouTube videos according to figures by CIA Director Leon Panetta in February 2011. This is a mammoth task for intelligence analysts, even more so because it is a constantly changing open source in a host of foreign languages and dialects.

Old methodologies still apply but there is a need for radical approaches, mastery of new methodologies and a slant towards a youthful approach to computer use.

The American government has risen to the open source challenge before. In June 2010, during the Iranian presidential elections, supporters of the opposition candidate MirHossein Mousavi, protested the election result via Twitter. Overnight, during the protest,

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the US State Department requested that Twitter management delay an upgrade to the network so that the protest could continue.

Twitter has the advantage of immediacy over other networks as the messages can be received and RT (retweeted) by mobile phones as SMS texts, as well as on laptops.

So if authorities take internet servers down to suppress protest, messages can get still get through on other networks or via external servers.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said his agency has set up a 35-member task force to examine how future unrest in sensitive regions could erupt and to assess potential outcomes. Much more attention will be paid, he added, to how the Internet and social media can spark and affect protest movements, although Panetta cautioned about the vast new piles of data that experts must pore over.

“The real challenge is... going through the diversity of languages, going through the different sites that are out there,” he said. “This involves a tremendous amount of analysis.”

The questionable impact of Facebook and Twitter Whether Facebook and Twitter allowed greater levels of communication and organization to

SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

take place to facilitate the revolutions in the Middle East is something for historians to decide. But there are others who argue that Facebook may have had less of a role than some analysts now assert. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, argued in a lecture at Cambridge University in March 2011 that the role of Facebook and Twitter might have been exaggerated.

“Yes [Twitter and Facebook] did play a part, although not nearly as large a part as Al-Jazeera. But the guide produced by Egyptian revolutionaries… says on the first page, ‘Do not use Facebook and Twitter’, and says on the last page, ‘Do not use Facebook and Twitter’. There is a reason for that. There was actually a Facebook revolt in Cairo three or four years ago. It was very small. After the revolt, Facebook was used to round up all the principal participants. They were then beaten, interrogated and incarcerated.”10 So to use Facebook in a revolutionary uprising could be argued to have high costs if the uprising was to fail.

Another multinational threat identified by James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, as a key priority to the intelligence community in February 2011, is Wikileaks itself. Two important dumps of information taken from the United States own information system in July 2010 revealed tens of thousands of confidential military field reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, in late December 2010, 250,000 diplomatic cables, were released to a number of news organisations. Importantly, these revealed that: “Despite sustained denials by US officials spanning more than a year, US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in north and south Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas” 11

The shift in emphasis from counter insurgency options to counter terrorism While defence intelligence officials focus their attention on the risks to their interests in the Middle East and the Maghreb, highlighted in social networking technologies, long-standing military intelligence practices are being reinforced in Afghanistan. General Petraeus, Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, has been underlining a shift in emphasis for 2011 from counter insurgency operations to counter terrorism backed by a reinvigorated intelligence capability:

General Petraeus, Commander, International

INTELLIGENCE LED

Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, has been underlining a shift in emphasis for 2011 from counter insurgency operations to counter terrorism backed by a reinvigorated intelligence capability.

“The key to those operations is not the operators themselves, it’s not the so-called door kickers, or the assaulters, it’s the enablers, it’s the full-motion video platforms, it’s the various other intelligence elements and assets, it’s analysts, it’s interrogators, it’s linguists, it’s a host of those and we have added enormous numbers of various types of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities over the course of the last six months in particular, and we’re going to add a substantial number more.” 12 He went on in the interview to illustrate his argument about the importance of military intelligence: “Just to give you one example – the blimps – you see two of them over Kabul now – we’ve gone from 8 to 68 of those just in the last several months, and we’re going to expand those further. Each one of those has very capable optics on it. They can typically see about a 15-20 kilometre radius with quite a high degree of precision, and that makes life pretty difficult for somebody who’s trying to plant an IED in the range of one of those.

That is just one of many, many types of additional enablers that are being brought on.”13

INTELLIGENCE LED Advanced Covert Tracking and Location Systems and Solutions Delivering intelligence solutions to military, federal, security and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

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SPECIAL REPORT: COVERT TRACKING AND LOCATION SYSTEMS

References: 1

The Puzzle Palace, A report on America’s most Secret Agency by James Bamford Penguin Books 1983 p83

2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

3

Intelligence and International Relations in the Early Cold War. Christopher Andrews p328 Cambridge University Press

4

The Puzzle Palace as above p223

5

The new protracted conflict: Intelligence and the war on terrorism by Bruce Berkowitz, Orbis 2002

6

Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information: Gregory F. Treverton Cambridge University Press 2003

7

Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information: Gregory F. Treverton Cambridge University Press 2003

8

ibid p68

9

Failing to Keep Up With the Information Revolution: The DI and “IT” Bruce Berkowitz

10

Patrick Kingsley guardian.co.uk Tuesday 15 March 2011 21.13 GMT

11

New York Times 02.11.2011

12

FT interview transcript: Gen David Petraeus by Matthew Green in Kabul Published: February 7 2011 20:33

13

FT interview transcript: Gen David Petraeus by Matthew Green in Kabul Published: February 7 2011 20:33 Also Legacy of Ashes The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (2007)

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