Airborne Combat Engineer

Sensitive military info readily available on internet

In a survey of servers run by agencies or companies involved with the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Associated Press found dozens of documents that officials refused to release when asked directly, citing troop security.

Such material goes online all the time, posted most often by mistake. It's not in plain sight, unlike the plans for the new American embassy in Baghdad that appeared recently on the Web site of an architectural firm. But it is almost as easy to find.

And experts said foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists working with al-Qaida likely know where to look.

MSNBC

A picture is worth... very little as documentation

Well-meaning researchers from Carnegie Mellon University destroyed the credibility of all photos on the web today. Alexiei Efros, assistant professor of computer science and robotics lead the team that created two related systems that, together, will do what governments and corporations could only dream of (until now).

The first program, called Photo Clip Art, uses thousands of labeled images from a site called LabelMe. These images can be added to photos. The system analyzes the geometric context of a photo, and place objects within the scene, adjusting its size as necessary to put it in proportion to other objects of equal distance from the camera.

The second program is called Scene Completion. It draws upon millions of photos from the Flickr website to fill in holes in photos. These "holes" are created when editors decide that some part of a picture is unsightly, and wants to remove it.

Technovelgy

The media has already been caught (repeatedly) using Photoshop to "enhance" photos. Now, they (and bloggers) have a tool which is even quicker and easier to use.

iSee

Special Forces troops and infantry unit commanders are finally getting a handheld device that will show them real-time video taken by UAVs or aircraft overhead. The handheld (about the size of a PDA, or a 1990s era cell phone), part of the ROVER (Remote Operations Video Enhanced Receiver) series, will arrive next year. These ROVER devices use a satellite data link to get the video from overhead UAVs or aircraft.

Strategy Page

This can already be done using larger equipment. See the continuation for an example.

British hostages back home. Swap?

Fifteen British sailors and marines held captive for nearly two weeks left Iran early Thursday with sweets and souvenirs, a day after the announcement of their release defused a growing confrontation between the two countries.

The crew sat in business class on a British Airways flight that departed Mehrabad International Airport, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said. They were expected to arrive in London around noon local time (7AM EDT).

Ahmadinejad then declared that even though Iran had the right to put the Britons on trial, he had "pardoned" them to mark the March 30 birthday of the Prophet Muhammad and the coming Easter holiday.

"This pardon is a gift to the British people," he said.

Ahmadinejad then declared that even though Iran had the right to put the Britons on trial, he had "pardoned" them to mark the March 30 birthday of the Prophet Muhammad and the coming Easter holiday. "This pardon is a gift to the British people," he said.

[AAD, AP]

Last night, Craig Ferguson quipped this was like your neighbor taking your lawn mower and giving it back to you as a gift.

HotAir notes one "detainee" didn't look appreciative for being taken and then given back. The UK should give him a medal.

Was a swap involved? See the continuation.

Military record data theft

[LINK] Military.com

Veterans Affairs officials today announced the theft of personal information on up to 26.5 million veterans. However, VA Secretary R. James Nicholson stressed there's no indication the information is being used for purposes of fraud.

"We at the VA have recently learned that an employee here, a data analyst, took home a considerable amount of electronic data from the VA, which he was not authorized to do," Nicholson said. "His home was burglarized, and this data was stolen."

Oh, great!

Bell South, AT&T added to lawsuit

[LINK] AP

NEW YORK - AT&T Inc. and Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. have been added to a lawsuit seeking $200 billion in damages from telephone companies accused of violating privacy laws by turning over calling records to the government, lawyers said Tuesday.

The lawsuit was originally filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan against Verizon Communications Inc.

Nothing like a court case to bring out the truth.

Strategy Page offers a possible explanation for the Telcos denials.

Is the NSA using the wrong methodology?

... to detect signals to "sleeper cells?"

[LINK] Defense Tech

"As the military scientist Robert Spulak has described it to me, you might not see your college roommate for 10 years, but if he were to call you up and ask to stay in your apartment, you'd let him. This is the principle under which sleeper cells operate: there is no communication for years. Thus for the most dangerous threats, the links between nodes that the agency is looking for simply might not exist."

Bell South says it didn't give records to NSA

[LINK] AJC

BellSouth said Monday it did not turn over massive amounts of customer calling information to the government, nor was top executive Duane Ackerman asked to participate in such a program.

The truth will out, in time.

Is NSA phone mining a waste of time and money?

[LINK] DefenseReview.org

Here's what Valdis Krebs, who's considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis -- the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data, says:

"The right thing to do is to look for the best haystack, not the biggest haystack. We knew exactly which haystack to look at in the year 2000 [before the 9/11 attacks]. We just didn't do it...

The worst part -- the thing that's most disappointing to me -- is that this is not the right way to do this. It's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free."

Are we flying drones over Iran, or not?

CNN reports conflicting stories out of Washington.

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