Bloodless Coup

More Visits From Military Intelligence

Today we got a little bit excited to see that we had a visit from someone at C-Span (Baltar says "Go Congress!"):

Domain Name c-span.org ^? (Organization)IP Address 12.40.160.# (NATIONAL CABLE AND SATELLITE CORP)

12.40.160.130

ISP AT&T WorldNet ServicesLocation 

Continent	:	North America
Country	:	United States  (Facts)
State	:	Maryland
City	:	Dayton
Lat/Long	:	39.2402, -77.0037 (Map)

Language unknownOperating System Microsoft WinXPBrowser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)Javascript disabledTime of Visit Feb 9 2006 4:05:48 pmLast Page View Feb 9 2006 4:05:48 pm

And then we noticed this:

Domain Name army.mil ^? (Military)IP Address 192.172.8.# (USAISC-CECOM)

192.172.8.13

ISP USAISC-CECOMLocation 

Continent	:	North America
Country	:	United States  (Facts)
State	:	New Jersey
City	:	Fort Monmouth
Lat/Long	:	40.3145, -74.0417 (Map)

Language unknownOperating System Microsoft WinXPBrowser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)Javascript disabledTime of Visit Feb 9 2006 11:15:11 amLast Page View Feb 9 2006 11:15:11 amVisit Length 0 secondsPage Views 1Referring URLunknownVisit Entry Page http://www.bloodlesscoup.com/blog/Visit Exit Page http://www.bloodlesscoup.com/blog/Time Zone unknownVisitor's Time UnknownVisit Number 19,073

Yes, that's right, visitor 19,073...come on dooowwwwnnnnn!

What's behind door number 19,073? Well, funny you should ask:

USAISC-CECOM in a google search brings up some websites who have received hits and do not like it as well as a WhoIs search (plus some nutty stuff, skip that). For further information on USAISC and CECOM, there are some google searches.

To find the websites directly: USAISC and CECOM.

According to Global Security here's a little background on our visitors:

The mission of the US Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) is to develop, acquire and sustain superior information technologies and integrated systems, enabling battlespace dominance for America's warfighters. CECOM provides the architectural framework and systems engineering to insure joint interoperability and horizontal technology integration across the TOTAL battlespace. CECOM executes its mission throughout the lifecycle of warfighting systems and platforms through an integrated process of technology generation and application, acquisition excellence, logistics power projection, project management and depot operations. The command furthers joint interoperability through an alliance with its counterpart commands in the Navy and Air Force, and through a jointly staffed Commanders in Chief (CINC) Interoperability Program Office (CIPO) at Fort Monmouth.

Fort Monmouth is home to a wide variety of Army, Department of Defense (DoD) and other government activities. CECOM, although geographically dispersed at various locations in the US and around the world, is the host and largest activity at Fort Monmouth. Among the government organizations located on Fort Monmouth are two Army Program Executive Offices - Command, Control and Communications Systems (PEO-C3S) and Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO-IEWS); the Defense Information Systems Agency/Joint Interoperability Engineering Organization; and numerous other resident activities. To accomplish CECOM's vision to be the Universally Recognized Leader in Providing Information Dominance Capabilities to America's Warfighters, "...So Overwhelming That Decisive Victory is Achieved,"

CECOM relies on seven major organizational components: the Research, Development and Engineering Center (RDEC); Software Engineering Center (SEC); Information Systems Engineering Command (ISEC); Deputy for Systems Acquisition/Systems Management Center (DSA/SMC); Logistics and Readiness Center (LRC); Tobyhanna Army Depot; and CECOM Acquisition Center (AC).

I've been chatting on and off about this very subject over at Born At the Crest of the Empire. Most recent thread here, which MikeVotes updates to link to the Topsail/TIA story that I mentioned here. He posts a link to a Defense Tech analysis on the "rebooting" of TIA:

We all knew that Total Information Awareness and its uber-database progeny weren't going away. It was just a question of what names TIA's bastard children were now using, and what government agencies had decided to give 'em a home.

Today, we find out about two of the not-so-little stinkers. Newsweek, in a brutal assessment of the NSA and other intelligence agencies ("Wanted: Competent Big Brothers"), tucks in this nugget:

Today, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of Topsail... two officials privy to the intelligence tell NEWSWEEK. It is in programs like these that real data mining is going on and—considering the furor over TIA—with fewer intrusions on civil liberties than occur under the NSA surveillance program. "It’s the best thing to come out of American intelligence in decades," says John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "It is truly Poindexter’s brainchild. Of all the people in the intelligence business, he has the keenest appreciation of using advanced information technology for intelligence gathering." Poindexter, who lives just outside Washington in Rockville, Md., could not be reached for comment on whether he is still involved with Topsail.

Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor has discovered a new data-mining program over at the Homeland Security Department. It's called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement -- "ADVISE," for short.

What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building.

But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA [Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment] portfolio. The key is not merely to identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a presentation at a November conference in Richland, Wash.

For example: Is a burst of Internet traffic between a few people the plotting of terrorists, or just bloggers arguing? ADVISE algorithms would try to determine that before flagging the data pattern for a human analyst's review.

Your tax dollars at work. And in the meantime, the government might know there are some terrorists running around in the US, but just can't seem to find them.

All this Reagan era flashback stuff is making me feel old, dammit, because I remember these jokers these convicted felons from the last teflon president.

As always, I feel much much safer.

Posted by binky at February 9, 2006 07:05 PM | TrackBack | Posted to SiteNotes | The Ever Shrinking Constitution