Some time ago, I was at a meeting that should never have existed. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the importance of “face time”, but face-to-face meetings should be about discussion, and collaboration, and this meeting had none of that. Worse yet, the entire point of the meeting could be summed up in one slightly long sentence: “The Final Policy Statement on such-and-such, which you were previously instructed to adopt and comply with by the end of the month, will not be issued on time, therefore we are remaining with the existing Interim Policy until further notice, and the assigned transition deadlines have been postponed indefinitely.” It should have been a memo, not a meeting, but there we were…
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Earlier this week, we were all regaled with stories of the Royal Navy’s most recent triumph over pirates, off the coast of Somalia. The Times, and others, referred to the incident as “the first time the Royal Navy had been engaged in a fatal shoot-out on the high seas in living memory”. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wondered, perplexed by this weaselly use of imprecise, non-metric measurement, just when the previous shoot-out on the high seas was.

Happily, I’ve managed to come up with the answer. I think.
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And now, for something slightly different…

From time to time, I’ve posted MP3 files of interesting programs from BBC radio; the response to these programs - including one about British hacker Gary McKinnon - has been fairly impressive. Never one to change a winning formula (memories of New Coke having forever scarred my psyche, and taste buds), I’ve got a little more stuff for your listening pleasure today.
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Last month, Mercyhurst professor Kristan Wheaton wrote about “push” and “pull” models of intelligence collection. Wheaton is obviously, and understandably, enamored of the “push model” of collection - where you don’t “request” (”pull”) information, but “accept” information sent (”pushed”) to you. It is, undoubtedly, a great idea - as he points out, it avoids (potentially) the whole “why are you asking about that?” question; it government parlance, it helps preserve operational security, a/k/a OPSEC.

“Pushed” intelligence collection isn’t all wholesome goodness, though: it has quite a number of issues which need to be addressed - or if not addressed, at least kept in mind.
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A little over a month ago, I made a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request to the U.S. Navy for a copy of a very obscure DVD produced by the Naval Education and Training Command about the Seabourn Spirit incident in 2005. Given the recent renewed public interest in Somali piracy, it seemed like the video was something worth trying to get. Alas, the Navy doesn’t want to part with the “USS Gonzales / USS Capt. St. George Somali Pirate Incident” case study.
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