Public Intelligence Blog

The Internet is forever.

Your private communications don´t need to be.

Wickr is a free app that provides: military-grade encryption of text, picture, audio and video messages ·sender-based control over who can read messages, where and for how long ·best available privacy, anonymity and secure file shredding features ·security that is simple to use

“Wickr – an iPhone encryption app a 3-year-old can use.”

“There is no reason your pictures, videos and communications should be available on some server, where it can easily be accessed by who-knows-who, or what service, without any control over what people do with it.” 

Wickr’s mission is to provide secure communications that Leave No Trace.

People are being tracked online and their data is being sold in ways they do not understand by numerous governments and corporations.

Wickr flips messaging on its head, giving control to the sender instead of the receiver (or servers in between).

After all, who doesn’t want control of the messages and media they share with others?  Security has never been so easy!

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U.K. businesses waste billions a year on tech investment

According to new research, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. habitually waste money on IT products and services they don’t need.

IT software provider SolarWinds released a new study today which examines what challenges IT staff face in small and medium businesses this year. Reaching out to 500 firms in the U.K. and Germany, the study found that although IT budgets have remained the same or increased over the last five years in 93 percent of SMEs, over 75 percent of firms are wasting money.

On average, IT employees said that roughly 12 percent of software, once purchased, remained in its box gathering dust. However, in 87 percent of businesses, this figure reached 50 percent. The researchers note that on average, £11,962 is spent on IT management software annually by 4.8 billion U.K. SMEs, and so this can translate into £6.89 billion a year being wasted.

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Sepp Hasslberger

MSV Explorer amphibious vehicle powered by free energy technology poised to be first to general market

British inventor and CEO, Chris Garner, has come up with the MSV Explorer, an amphibious vehicle that not only treks on land and through water, but is powered by an exotic free energy method he calls “self-sustaining” that will enable the vehicle to travel indefinitely without stopping for fuel. Coming next month.

(by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
(With a lot of exclusive material)

British inventor and CEO, Chris Garner, has come up with the MSV Explorer, an amphibious vehicle that not only treks on land and through water, but is powered by an exotic free energy method he calls a “super high-performance, electro mechanical gyro generator system.”

The revolutionary system will not only propel their MSV Explorer craft, but is poised to revolutionize energy in general, as this will apply not just to propulsion and travel (namely, go as far as you want without ever stopping for fuel) but to energy generators (ditto). Anything that can move a vehicle can also provide prime mover power for a genset, making electricity, either for a home, business, vehicle, or utility.

The company, MSVEX, is presently running in-house tests, which they expect to be completed in about a week. After that, they will be doing third-party testing to validate the technology, probably at the University of Plymouth (UK), or another university, depending on available facilities.

Due to the sexy appearance of the craft, the story has been picked up all over the mainstream press, who can’t help but call the energy source “perpetual motion”, rather than just saying that the technology harnesses a new force of nature not yet fully understood. The Daily Mail, for example, says: “Mr. Garner claims to have found a solution to the age-old puzzle of perpetual motion and is now poised to go public with his scientific breakthrough.” (Link)

Garner prefers to describe it as “self-sustaining energy”.

Third-Party Test Results of Self-Sustaining Power” Coming Soon

Phi Beta Iota:  This would be a great SEAL “picket-line pod” (PLP), a whole series of which could be dropped off from an amphibious landing craft.  It could also be used for sustainable short- and mid-term ocean surface surveillance, to include remotely piloted stealth versions.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime

Blowing the Whistle on Spying, Lying & Illegalities in the Digital Era

Featuring Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jessaelyn Radack

With the post 9/11 rise of the leviathan national security state, the rule of law in the United States under the Constitution is increasingly rule by secrecy, surveillance and executive fiat.

Under the guise and veil of “national security” and “protecting” America through enabling act legislation and state “privilege,” the United States government embarked on an unparalleled expansion of secret government power after 9/11, operating largely in the dark, while using extra-judicial executive authority for justifying its policies, including secret spying on its own citizens in violation of the Constitution.

Speakers Radack, Drake and Binney will highlight their searing experiences with the Department of Justice and the National Security Agency, when they were marked as criminal targets of the US government due to their whistleblower disclosures involving rendition/torture, national security, multi-billion fraud, pervasive institutional corruption, violations of the 1st and 4th Amendments, civil and human rights, illegal surveillance on a vast scale and other unlawful secret government conduct and wrongdoing.

They will also discuss the serious and compelling implications resulting from their excruciating ordeals centered on the nexus of secrecy, transparency, technology, privacy, anonymity, Internet and the law as well as actions people can take to deal with the reality of the growing surveillance state and its direct threats to human rights, liberty and freedom around the world in both our off- and on-line lives.

Conference Information

Tom Atlee

This kind of information should be spread as fast as possible. – Tom

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

Exclusive: A laboratory shows how an e-voting machine used by a third of all voters can be easily manipulated

Brad Friedman, Salon, 27 September 2011

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota:  The two political parties and the Department of Justice under varied Administrations have known of all this since the Diebold machines were first introduced and their CEO bragged publicly that he would “deliver” the next election to George Bush Junior.  What kind of Nation is so stupid and so apathetic as to tolerate this kind of pervasive electoral crime?

See Also:

Diebold Crime at DuckDuckGO

Journal: The U.S. electoral system is in danger, once again.

Review: Grand Illusion–The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

Wikipedia entry for “Diebold Election Systems” which was acquired by “Premiere Election Solutions” then by “Election System & Software” (ES&S) which was then acquired by “Dominion.”

Video: Princeton Univ Exposes Diebold Flaws

Diebold to Deploy Situational Awareness Platform Software to Manage Security Systems at World Trade Center Site

DefDog

Court allows challenge of U.S. surveillance law

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post, 21 September 2011

A group of plaintiffs hoping to mount a challenge to U.S. surveillance law secured a major victory Wednesday when a federal appeals court upheld their standing to sue the government.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ 6-6 decision allows a group of American lawyers, human rights activists and journalists to challenge the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as amended by Congress in 2008.

The revision expanded the government’s surveillance authority, permitting intelligence agencies to collect information on U.S. soil without a warrant identifying a particular individual — as long as the government could assure a surveillance court that its targeting procedures are designed to find people who are not U.S. persons and who are overseas.

U.S. government has typically attempted to block such challenges by arguing that litigation would reveal state secrets or that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue. But in March, a three-judge panel accepted the argument of the plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, that the law had harmed them by forcing them to take draconian measures to avoid government interception of their phone calls and e-mails to overseas clients.

In other words, the plaintiffs in the case, Amnesty International v. Clapper, had standing.

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Patrick Meier

Crisis Mapping Somalia with the Diaspora

The state of Minnesota is home to the largest population of Somalis in North America. Like any Diaspora, the estimated 25,000 Somalis who live there ar closely linked to family members back home. They make thousands of phone calls every week to numerous different locations across Somalia. So why not make the Somali Diaspora a key partner in the humanitarian response taking place half-way across the world?

In Haiti, Mission 4636 was launched to crowdsource micro needs assessments from the disaster affected population via SMS. The project could not have happened without hundreds of volunteers from the Haitian Diaspora who translated and geo-referenced the incoming text messages. There’s no doubt that Diasporas can play a pivotal role in humanitarian response but they are typically ignored by large humanitarian organizations. This is why I’m excited to be part of an initiative that plans to partner with key members of the Diaspora to create a live crisis map of Somalia.

Read more….

See Also:

Ushahidi & The Unprecedented Role of SMS in Disaster Response

Open Source Ecology — 50 Open Source Tools for Resilience

Industrial productivity can be achieved on a small scale….it just requires open source design.  A single DVD is a civilization starter kit.

Interactive Transcript

About The Speaker

About This Talk

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).

IMF attack goal said to be network ‘insider presence’

‘It was a targeted attack,’ says expert who once worked for organization

Reuters, 11  June 2011

Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting on two levels.  First, all instruments of Empire can expect to be attacked; without any central impetus, we anticipate a global cyber-intelligence and penetration network to develop, similar to what has matured for Free/Open Source Software, but with penetration, understanding, and neutralization of as the objective.  A Cyber-Militia, if you will.  Second, no government, no corporation, no international organization, can muster the global intelligence capability needed to be effective in today’s reality–the US Government least of all.  An opportunity is emerging for a multinational decision-support centre and network co-sponsored by a mix of stakeholders who are willing to commit to absolute integrity.  That is all it takes: integrity and a commitment to “The Virgin Truth.”

See Also:

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Cyber-Virus Proliferation: USG as “Main Enemy”

2011 Cyber-Command or IO 21 + IO Roots

Journal: Army Industrial-Era Network Security + Cyber-Security RECAP (Links to Past Posts)

Search: Steele USMC C4I 1990′s

Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2)