Blogflytning

Jeg kommer lige til at skramle lidt med at flytte min blog på grund af tekniske ændringer hos Google. Stay tuned.

Speciale på nettet

Jeg har langt om længe fået lagt mit speciale ud på nettet til fri afbenyttelse. Lige da det var afleveret tøvede jeg fordi jeg troede jeg måske skulle bruge det til andre ting, men det er ikke sket så nu kan du finde det under Papers i højre side - eller her. Jeg har ikke fulgt propagandateoretikerne siden - men da det blev afleveret tør jeg godt sige det var det mest grundige studie på dansk af begrebet "propaganda" i en retorisk kontekst.

Bin Laden Speech Archive discontinued

Two and a half year after the last update, it is hardly a surprise for anyone that I discontinue updating my complete list of Bin Laden speeches. I simply haven't been concentrating on the issue for a long time. Furthermore, others, like NEFA Foundation and MEMRI have been a bit better at systematising their coverage.

Initially, when I started the archive in 2004, I used it to be able to make a good comparative analysis of Bin Laden's evolution as a speaker. It has served that purpose on some occasions and has been used by others as well.

But besides being an indication of my shifting interests and my lack of attention to the blog, I also think that this is indicative of the decline of importance that Bin Laden is experiencing. I had the thought that should he actually start to appear with full interviews and talks-show apperances on Al Jazeera and CNN tomorrow, this wouldn't influence the direction of international Jihadism. His role is a historical one now, and without being a jihadism expert, I think his role as main inspiration for Islamists is largely over. That might be good, some would think, but actually I think that the war now has a thousand fathers and inspirators.

Danske droner: TV til taliban?

Wired's eminente blog Danger Room har fulgt afsløringerne af hvordan den amerikanske hær opdagede at videosignalerne fra deres ubemandede fly (droner) blev hentet ned af irakiske oprørere. Opdagelsen blev gjort da hæren gennemsøgte huse og fandt bærbare computere fyldt med videooptagelser af oprørerne - vel at mærke lavet fra deres egne droner.

Een af de mest sårbare droner er typen "Raven". Det danske forsvar har denne type droner, som grundlæggende bare er en lille håndholdt, fjernstyret flyver. Ravnen, som den danske udgave hedder, sprøjter ubekymret radiosignaler i alle retninger og alle og enhver der kan fange dem, kan se dem - med mindre de altså er krypterede. De amerikanske Ravens var ikke og det bliver der nu arbejdet på højtryk med at rette. Men hvad med de danske? Efter fiaskoen med Tårnfalken er Ravnen den mest udbredte UAV i Forsvaret og den bliver brugt i Afghanistan.

The power of collaborative intelligence?

Ever so often, a little development shows how the internet is increasingly powering collaborative intelligence efforts. The increasing number of "sensors" out there (mobile-phones, etc etc) and the many specialist corners of the internet makes for more and more value in the open intelligence "production" on the internet. And compared to closed intelligence productions, the free flow of debate, rhetorical "anti-logos", makes for much more nuanced analyses in the end.

The latest of such anecdotes is that the US Airforce has just disclosed a hitherto secret drone project it was working on. The french newspaper Liberation's Secret Defence blog had pictures of a mysterious drone over Afghanistan, brought a picture snapped over Afghanistan, by god-knows-who, a grainy photo of a flying UAV. This unknown model was circulated and processed in a lot of specialist blogs and a pretty credible explanation was arrived at. At the same time, new pictures surfaced. And voilá! If you secret is safe with everyone on the internet, why not go public as the US Airforce did. Read more here.

Danish Defence doing black psyops - against Denmark

I have been out of orbit on the blog for quite a while. But an escalating scandal here in Denmark just needs my two cents.

Basically, one employee in the very top of the Danish Defence has produced a fabrication to influence the Danish public by shaping the narrative of a controversial case. That is exactly the type of disinformation operations that the Soviets were masters at, also known as black (hidden) psyops.

The problem here is twofold: First of all, the most obvious, this is of course a disheartening action by a high ranking officer in a democratic country. Luckily he was found out rather quickly. But secondly, the fabrication and its dissemination was utterly unprofessionally carried out and then brought on by a number of top Defence employees, ending at the Defence Minister, with no simple technical questions asked until later. This might hint a structural dyslexia of the mechanics of public relations - and consequently information operations, which is an increasingly important part of modern war- and peacefare.

The case
* A former Jægerkorps soldier (Special Forces) was about to publish a book about his time in the forces. The book was a typical example of a secret operative who wanted to get some overdue glory and was unnecessarily full of technical details. The Defence Command moves to get the Court to restrain it on 14 September, stating that it contains unspecified knowledge that can be used by current enemies of Danish soldiers. Having read it, I understand why the Defence Command thought this.

* Seeing a potential limit to the freedom of expression, the newspaper Politiken quickly published the entire book as a section in their newspaper 16 September. The book had most likely been explicitly given to the paper by the publisher for that purpose, although the publisher banged the litigation drums. The same day the book is published on WikiLeaks.

* The Defence's IT executive translates the book via Google Translate, pastes it into a word document and says he found it on a torrent download site. This is then quickly brought through the ranks, sent to a newspaper on 23 September and repeated casually by the Defence Minister on a press conference 24 September. The paper, however, quickly establishes that the translation is Google gobbledygook and the Word file specifies that it is created by the Defence Command.

* In the coming days, the Defence Minister and the Defence Command's press relations executive both deny that the translation should be made by the Defence itself. They can't, they say, identify who sent the translation to the newspaper.

* On 1 October the IT Executive steps forward and is relieved of command immediately. On 2 October, the Defence Command's Press relations executive admits that he sent the book to the newspaper. The Minister's personal press relations employee has also sent it to a journalist at the state television DR.

* On 4 October the Chief of Defence steps down.

What it means
Trying to plant fabrications to sway a public against a case is something that has been done very often by militaries around the world. During the cold war, this was a common pastime for various intelligence agencies. The Soviets, for example, was supposedly behind the rumour that AIDS was developed by US scientists - a claim you will still hear in various corners of the world. Later, the Russians under the newly elected president Putin went to the second Chechen war after buildings were blown up in Russia, alledgedly by Chechen terrorists, but later doubted by a number of independent researchers. Putting out a "meme" in written or physical ways to sway a public, is wildly influential if done with thought. Most countries, however, have laws explicitly forbidding its military to target its own population with "propaganda" and disinformation. In a globalised world, however, controlling the flow of falsifications is impossible.

In this case, the system worked: Sceptic journalists uncovered that something was amiss, politicians and more journalists continued digging until Danish Defence Intelligence started an internal investigation which made the culprit and the disseminators confess before their computers had even been scanned.

A few years back I looked at the Danish Defence's capabilities and prospects of taking up "information operations" (a label for a number of different communication capabilities, ranging from press relations to cyber war and psyops). Being a small country with limited resources, information operations was a force multiplyer that the Danish Defence couldn't live without, in my opinion. There were some structural and organisational difficulties, but nothing that couldn't be overcome if the Danish Defence's heart was put into it.

But this case shows that the involved, high-ranking officers, were rather naïve about what you could get away with. I don't blame the IT executive for thinking that you could trick a journalist, generally some of the most tech-unsavy people around in my experience. But concocting something a Wednesday afternoon and then unleashing it to prove a point, that's just plain stupid of a man you would put in charge of a frigate - or the entire Defence's IT systems.

The real consequence of this, apart from the heads that will roll, is that the people in the Defence who work hard and earnest to use information actively in warfare and towards publics in the world, will be put even further back as the Defence most likely will cramp up in fear of allegations of working with "propaganda. This will mean that information operations will not be prioritised and the Defence will try even harder than it admittedly already has to be seen as a fair and earnest media outlet.

International terrorisme og kontraterrorisme

Jeg har tidligere prøvet mig med kurser of forelæsningrækker på Folkeuniversitetet. Nu bliver det til noget med et kursus om International terrorism og kontraterrorisme. Det bliver sjovt!:

International terrorisme og kontraterrorisme(forelæsningsrække)

Ved forskningskoordinator, ph.d. Flemming Splidsboel Hansen og cand.mag., MA Nis Leerskov Mathiesen.

Forelæsningsrækken har to formål. Det første er at bibringe deltagerne en
forståelse af den internationale terrorismes baggrund, udvikling og nuværende
væsen. Terrorismen har været blandt os i et par tusinde år, og den vil
naturligvis ikke forsvinde igen. Tværtimod synes den inden for de seneste par
årtier at have udviklet sig i en meget voldsom retning. Blandt årsagerne er
ændringer i teknologi og kommunikation, men der har muligvis også været en
idemæssig radikalisering, som gør, at de moderne "superterrorister" forsøger
at gøre så megen skade som muligt.
Det andet formål er at drøfte de værktøjer, som er nødvendige for at kunne
tage stilling til forskellige former for kontraterrorisme. Hvis vi i dag står
over for "superterrorister", er det måske på tide, at vi tager nye og
skrappere metoder i brug for at forsvare os selv. Ønsket om sikkerhed har
fået de fleste stater til at begrænse den enkelte borgers frihed. Men hvor
langt skal vi egentligt gå?
1. Hvad er terrorisme? (FSH)
2. Terroristernes mål og midler (NLM).
3. Kontraterrorisme (FSH).
4. Terrorindustrien (NLM).
5. Et kig ind i fremtiden (NLM/FSH).