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"intelligence assessments", “social media and common sense”, Bellingcat’s “proofs”, Facebook, intelligence professionals, Libya, Michael Flynn, Open Source Intelligence, Russia, Social Media, the MH17 catastrophe, Twitter, Ukraine
First published at http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/05/when-intelligence-isnt.html
In my career in the Canadian government I was never formally in “intelligence” but I did participate in writing many “intelligence assessments”. Facebook, Twitter and other kinds of social media didn’t much exist at that time but, even if they had, I can’t imagine that we would have ever used them as sources of evidence: social media is, to put it mildly, too easy to fake. In writing intelligence assessments, while we did use information gathered from intelligence sources (ie secret), probably more came from what was rather pompously called OSInt (Open Source Intelligence; in other words, stuff you don’t need a security clearance to learn). What was, however, the most important part of creating an assessment was the long process of discussion in the group. Much talk and many rewrites produced a consensus opinion.
A typical intelligence assessment would start with a question – what’s…
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For Tubularsock there has never been intelligence out of Washington!
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The blizzard of the world really does seem to have crossed the threshold sometimes. Is there any way back?
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