Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism

In case you are interested, RAND just published the following:

Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism [182-page pdf]

This report presents the findings of research into the involvement of organized crime and terrorist groups in counterfeiting products ranging from watches to automobile parts, from pharmaceuticals to computer software. It presents detailed case studies from around the globe in one area of counterfeiting, film piracy, to illustrate the broader problem of criminal — and perhaps terrorist — groups finding a new and not-much-discussed way of funding their activities. Piracy is high in payoff and low in risk, often taking place under the radar of law enforcement.

The case studies provide compelling evidence of a broad, geographically dispersed, and continuing connection between film piracy and organized crime, as well as evidence that terrorist groups have used the proceeds of film piracy to finance their activities.

Counterfeiting is a threat not only to the global information economy, but also to public safety and national security. Cooperation among law enforcement and governments around the world is needed in the battle against intellectual-property theft, and meaningful progress will require increased political will, strong legislation, consistent enforcement, deterrent sentencing, and innovative solutions. The report lays out an agenda of measures.

Increased global intelligence-gathering and sharing is needed to further illuminate the scope and nature of the connections between piracy and organized crime, and policymakers and law enforcement worldwide should reexamine the common but erroneous assumption that counterfeiting is a victimless crime.

Ain' t Dat Be Da' Damnedest Of Thangz (Love this sh*t); We're but IO

Pieces of some puzzle fallin' into place.

It is not the family's first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah's cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though the men were 20 years apart in age and do not appear to have known each other well.

Res ipsa loquitur.



...and now for ramblings as can only be born of arrogance:

While haphazardly still at it: a generic H/T piled upon trap-shruggin' ZenPundit. He be a Sickago-Boy - but he be not as bad as such creature deservedly's cut out to be.

And lest we forget ( per some peversely recondite way) - SMC was metrosexually hyper-lauded by a major Skankinavian radio station. Station's pubatorial chattering vassals had nothing but solid praise to heap upon our pickled arses - and per transitive property of inequality...your sorry voyeuristic arse too.

Anyways: amidst all this coincidental deification of meatballian wisdom - the local pheasant-gazing and, at that, mongoloidian embassy "economic analyst" reported nothing worse/better in his morning briefing to ambassador retardo de jour than that the skanky radio bandits unequivocably labelled us as..."incredibly cool".

Public diplomacy at its Zenith. (Yuck, goddammit - We're all IO).

Core men up front

(Run MountainRunner run.)

Middle East: Costs of Conflict

The opportunity cost of conflicts in the Middle East since 1991 is 12 trillion dollars, says a new research report [6-page pdf] on the Cost of Conflict in the Middle East by Strategic Foresight Group, a leading Asian think-tank. [related Youtube video. See also agenda for International Workshop on Cost of Conflict in the Middle East - 11-page pdf]

For the first time in 60 years, the report presents a comprehensive assessment of costs of various conflicts in the Middle East on 97 different parameters- from the social to psychological and economic to environmental. Supported by the Governments of Switzerland and Norway, the AK Party of Turkey and Qatar Foundation, the Strategic Foresight Group involved over 50 leading experts and leaders from the region to gather input for the report.

If the conflict in the Middle East had been resolved in 1991 at the time of the Madrid peace process, almost all families in the Arab world as well as Israel would be enjoying double the per capita income they have today. Iraq’s GDP would have been $300 billion instead of $59 that it is expected to be in 2010.

The environmental costs are staggering. The First Gulf War accounts for 10 million barrels of oil spilt into the sea and 45 million barrels spilt in the Kuwait desert. In a future war, if the volume of spilt oil doubles to 100 million barrels per day, it would equal 1 day’s oil supply for the world. Similarly, a future conflict in the Middle East could account for more carbon emissions than of an industrialized country such as the UK.

The Palestinian people have lost over 100 million man hours waiting at the checkpoints between Ramallah and Jerusalem since 2000. At present there are more than 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli Detention Centers. The unemployment in Gaza reached over 50% with the suspension of 95% of the industrial operations even before the December 2008 attack by Israel.

Israel’s costs are also significant in human and psychological terms with the country suffering over than 34000 missile attacks since 2000. Almost 1000 Israeli citizens have lost their lives during the same period and 123 minors have been killed in attacks on cafes, schools and buses. More than 90% of Israelis live in fear.

The report argues that a comprehensive peace agreement would make a number of projects feasible including gas deals, railway lines and the much talked about Red-Dead Sea Canal. It would also provide peace dividends to all the countries in the region, including $4429 per year per Israeli household, $500 per Egyptian household and $1250 per Jordanian family.

The report by Strategic Foresight Group does not suggest solutions for peace. It outlines four scenarios as to what could be the impact of various policy options.

Davos Dustup

NYT

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey walked off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, during a panel discussion on Gaza at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, vowing never to return to the annual gathering.

Mr. Erdogan apparently became incensed after the moderator curtailed his response to remarks by Mr. Peres on the recent Israeli military campaign.

(...)

In a news conference immediately after the panel discussion, Mr. Erdogan said he was particularly upset with Mr. Ignatius, who he said had failed to direct a balanced and impartial panel. ;)

Amuse bouche AQ: GWOT Strategic PSYOP

An offering from the main GWOT Strategic PSYOP can be detected from this piece in the new Economist:

Al-Qaeda's failure to fight for Palestine comes up repeatedly in jihadist internet forums. It also forms part of the latest ideological counter-attack against al-Qaeda by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, one of its founders in 1998 and a leading jihadist ideologue under the pen-name "Dr Fadl". He has since fallen out with its leaders, particularly Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded him as head of Egypt's Islamic Jihad group. Al-Qaeda, he now says, "did not offer Palestine anything except words".

Dr Fadl was arrested in Yemen in 2001 and extradited to Egypt. His first assault on al-Qaeda for its profligate killing of Muslims, at the end of 2007, prompted Mr Zawahiri to write a rebuttal of nearly 200 pages. The rejoinder to that, issued in November, was serialised in an Egyptian newspaper. His latest critique ranges from personal attacks on Mr Zawahiri to accusations that al-Qaeda has distorted Islamic law on jihad and inflicted a series of disasters on Muslims.

Dr Fadl accuses Mr Zawahiri of being an agent of the Sudanese intelligence services who agreed to carry out ten attacks in Egypt in the 1990s in exchange for $100,000. He denounces him as a liar and a coward who incites others to die in jihad while not taking part in the fighting. Egyptian prisons and graveyards were filled with jihadists, but Mr Zawahiri fled abroad, he says.

Al-Qaeda blames America for all the woes of the Muslim world. But Dr Fadl says the problem is Muslims' own failings. He accuses al-Qaeda of declaring entire populations, even in Muslim countries, to be apostates, and of establishing a "criminal doctrine" of wholesale slaughter. This defies traditional injunctions in Islamic law against indiscriminate killing. Even the killing of non-believers in war is restricted, he avers, pointing to the bans on killing women, boys, the demented and hired hands such as labourers and peasants.

The attacks on America in 2001, says Dr Fadl, prompted foreign invasions and the destruction of the "Islamic state" set up by the Taliban. It led to the death of more Muslims than have been killed in all of Israel's wars. "Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers," he writes. Their talk of Palestine is "just for propaganda"; they cannot find allies among Palestinians.

Do the ideological revisions of Dr Fadl, facilitated by the Egyptian security services, matter when the assault in Gaza may have won al-Qaeda new supporters? Some officials argue that the emotional fury will pass; they say Dr Fadl's first attack hurt al-Qaeda even though it followed Israel's equally brutal war in Lebanon in 2006. But pundits such as Bruce Hoffman, of Georgetown University in Washington, think the impact will be marginal. "Dr Fadl discomfits al-Qaeda," he says. "Young hotheads are not going to listen to some geriatric sitting in an Egyptian prison. But al-Qaeda worries he might have an impact on its finances."

Gaming Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - A video game depicting mercenaries storming Venezuela, which has been criticized in the oil-rich South American country as a blueprint for an invasion, will be released by a U.S. company this weekend.

(...)

The game, "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames," will be released on Sunday by a division of Electronic Arts Inc and is set in a "fully destructible Venezuela," the company said in a news release.

"A power hungry tyrant uses Venezuela's oil supply to overthrow the government and turns the country into a war zone," the company says of the game on its Web site.

In 2006, when the game was first announced, lawmakers from Chavez's coalition called it an example of a U.S. government-inspired propaganda campaign against Chavez that could even help lay the psychological groundwork for an actual invasion.

"All the controversy around this is kind of comical," Electronic Arts spokesman Jeff Brown said. "At the end of the day you have to remind yourself it's a damned video game."

The government on Friday said it could not immediately comment on the game's release.

(...)

A trailer for the game, set in 2010, features mercenaries with American accents storming oil installations during a bloody coup by a tyrant called Ramon Solano.

"It is time the Venezuelan people stop paying for the greed of foreign interests, we will make them pay dearly for our oil. From this day forward everybody pays," the character says before shots of helicopter gunships and tanks attacking familiar Venezuelan landscapes.

Chavez has nationalized oil projects owned by U.S. companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips.
-hacked&jacked Reuters

O'Radio Shack'd; Retronymized, Euphemized - Bettered

The oath redux wasn't acknowledged to have been visualized for offspring: grainy and 70'ish Radio Shack'd audio recordings do not perennially demand YouTubedization.

Redux; well heck, just knocking on wood. So that first, and most banal at that, challenge to a promise of reasonable transparency was surgically managed t'ward the more epic and Lincolnesque narrative. Picturesque. Love it. So 2.0 savvy. Day 1.

More below the fold on euphemization from some latter-day Christian Scientists:

No doubt about it, Mr. Obama's to-do list is suddenly a lot longer this week. As he struggles to restart the economy and save the environment, he'll also have to stay on top of all the wars the country is involved in or at the edge of.

And he'll have to take note of which wars are kinetic, and which ones aren't.

Come again? It's not exactly everywhere, but it's a term I've seen and heard often enough to pay attention: kinetic operations, aka "shooting wars."

Kinetic – it rhymes with frenetic – comes from a Greek word, kinein, meaning to move. Kinetic energy is energy of motion: a snowball flying through the air, for instance. Educational theorists speak of different people as having audio, visual, or kinetic (or kinesthetic) learning styles, depending on whether they learn best by hearing, seeing, or hands-on experience. Kinetic sculptures are those that move.

Kinetic has a cousin in the movie business, too – cinema. In the 1890s, the aptly named Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, borrowed another Greek word, kinema, meaning "movement," to coin the term cinématographe for the motion-picture camera they developed.

(While I'm digressing: The Online Etymology Dictionary reports, "When 3-D films seemed destined to be the next wave and the biggest thing to hit cinema since 'talkies,' they were known as deepies (1953). The gods have spared us.")

Meanwhile, kinetic is moving in other directions, too. "Afghanistan's kinetic action" was the somewhat cryptic headline on a piece the other day in Stars and Stripes, the independent news source for the US military community.

The lead was a little more enlightening, if not heartening: "Taliban fighters have turned increasingly to roadside bombs and other deadly tactics to combat U.S. soldiers and other NATO-led troops in southern Afghanistan, military officials say."

With such a grim story, no wonder there was a resort to euphemism.

By contrast, a "nonkinetic" operation is one with no shooting or bombing.

Thus the Navy Times quoted Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces, on efforts to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia: "The most effective measures we've seen ... are non-kinetic and defensive in nature."

Max Boot and Richard Bennet, writing last month in The Weekly Standard about "low-intensity counterinsurgency" against Islamist rebels in the Philippines, noted, "Traditional 'kinetic' operations in which bullets are fired and bombs dropped are still part of the Philippine strategy against their numerous guerrilla foes, but they have become less important over the years, thanks partly to the advice Philippine forces have received from the US Special Forces."

Kinetic operations are in contrast with "psy ops," psychological warfare, or civil affairs operations, such as building schools or setting up health clinics.

So is this use of kinetic largely a euphemism? Euphemism is part of it, surely, in the Afghan story.

But it's a retronym, too, as the American Heritage Dictionary defines it: "a word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development, as acoustic guitar in contrast to electric guitar or analog watch in contrast to digital watch."

In other words – the armed forces need this new usage because they are doing so many other things than firing weapons. And that is not a bad thing.

Mindjacking Down Gaza Way

Hijacking the airwaves, spreading false news and sowing doubt: Israel and Hamas are pulling out all the stops when it comes to psychological warfare. Lies and deceit are the weapons of choice in the effort to destroy enemy morale.

Roughly once every hour, Israel hijacks the airwaves: The voice of radio host Kamal Abdu Nasser cuts out for a few minutes and is replaced by that of an Arabic-speaking Israeli. Listeners in the Gaza Strip are convinced that, in those moments, Israel's military is speaking.

Hamas is responsible for the war and Gaza's misery, says the apparent imposter.

The Hamas television station Al-Aqsa is also periodically interrupted, viewers say. One example, they report, is that of a cartoon depicting a sniper shooting at pictures of Hamas leaders. An Arabic voiceover warns: "This time you will pay."

It was three years ago that Israel's army launched its department of psychological warfare. But its debut was less than stunning. During the Lebanon war in 2006, Israelis dropped poorly-made leaflets down on Shiite civilians in southern Lebanon. The pamphlets included a simplistic drawing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cowering behind a cedar tree, Lebanon's national symbol. The clumsily-delivered message was apparently that Lebanon's Schiite militia was hiding behind the country's civilians.

These flyers did not have the desired effect. Instead, the Lebanese showed them to visitors for months on end to show the Israeli army's naiveté. Many wondered whether Israel had honestly thought their pamphlets would change Lebanese minds.

But in the last two and a half years, Israel's army has learned a thing or two about psychological warfare. For one, they've captured the airways -- but for another, they've also improved their flyers. Pamphlets dropped on the Gaza Strip refrain from relying on simplistic propaganda images. Instead, they provide telephone numbers and e-mail addresses -- Palestinians can use them should they want to report the whereabouts of Hamas leaders or weapons caches.

One can assume the contact information isn't used often -- but the flyers are effective: "Pamphlets like these sow seeds of doubt among Hamas leaders and the civilian population," says Ephraim Kam, deputy head of the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. They create a general atmosphere of uncertainty because everyone suddenly holds the tools to betray the leaders of Hamas, he says.

Israeli reports about massive problems facing Hamas have a similar effect, according to Kam. Israeli military speakers have for days been reporting that their generals in the field have observed scores of demoralized Hamas fighters deserting. The claim can't be confirmed -- but it definitely affects morale. It strengthens the Israeli population's will to continue; and in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli media is the main source of information, this message raises questions about whether Hamas may, in fact, be on its last legs.

"Messages like these may or may not be true, but they definitely achieve one desired result," says Kam. "They undermine the confidence and certitude of Hamas."


The Islamists in the Gaza Strip have likewise employed the power of suggestion during this war, now almost three weeks old. Hamas has repeatedly released messages claiming that they have captured or killed Israeli soldiers. Translated into Hebrew, these announcements, are then inserted into the radio traffic in the Israeli-controlled parts of the Gaza Strip. Even if the messages are later disproved, they initially undermine the morale of soldiers in the field, according to Kam.

Hamas has instrumentalized the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a similar manner. Shalit has been in capitivity in the Gaza Strip for more than two and a half years -- his fate is of interest to the entire nation. Indeed, one of the goals of the current offensive is that of bringing Shalit home -- an it is one which the majority of the population supports wholeheartedly.

At the start of the Israeli offensive, Hamas claimed that Shalit had been wounded by Israeli fire. The message was clear: If Israel wanted to see Shalit return alive, it should stop the war. Then, last Sunday, the Gaza Islamists claimed that Schalit's health was no longer important. "He may be wounded or he may be fine. This question is no longer of any interest to us," said Hamas politburo member Mussa Abu Marsuk, thereby raising frenzied concern throughout Israel about the young man's wellbeing.

Even Hamas threats fired off at Israel over the past months seem to have been well-considered. "Shortly before the end of the cease-fire, Hamas started boasting that it had countless surprises awaiting Israeli troops, should they advance," says Kam. Threats that no soldier would ever leave the Gaza Strip alive were supposed to keep Israel at bay.

The threats, of course, were not ultimately successful in preventing an Israeli ground incursion. Still, says Kam, they raised fears of booby-traps, fighters hidden inside tunnel systems and further Hamas attempts to capture Israeli soldiers. "The IDF would certainly have been careful anyway, but Hamas's pre-war propaganda caused them to be doubly careful," says Kam.

Still, the most effective propaganda campaign in this war has certainly been waged by Israel.

On Dec. 26, when war between Israel and Hamas already seemed unavoidable, Jerusalem called for a 48-hour cease-fire. The government claimed it wanted to consider all possible political solutions. In order to give Hamas a sense of security, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak even appeared in a satirical broadcast on Dec. 26 -- by which point the decision to attack on the morning of Dec. 27 was 24-hours old. An unsuspecting Hamas considered itself safe. On the morning of Dec. 27, men met in offices and barracks and dozens of policemen gathered at a defense ceremony. At that point, nearly 60 Israeli fighter jets were already in the air, headed for battle.
-Hacked and jacked Spiegel Online

Jack B Back (Cheap Start): Rejectng COIN Wisdom

Given - it's way cheap but it B our lead-in:

Some yesterday's WaPo finds our boy prezenting the institutional viewpoint as per usual.

Spotted a gem from another yesterday, Rejecting COIN Wisdom (There's a Marc Lynch in here somewhere):

Maybe that's just the way these rightwing sociopaths want it. I'm at a loss to think of any other reason they continually deny accepted counter-insurgency expertise to bang the gong for more bloodshed.

Fellow Aspbergers: Dig the "rightwing sociopath" in question. LMAO

(Jack B Back.)

Foothills: Promises From a Chicken Ranch

Special schedules of long late had the better of our capacity to post & porntificate as intensely as we most oft love to do. Next week we're back again in more regular manner.

Thanks for this past year's visits and comments - and for the thoughtful posts written by intrepid & rigorous minds at the blogs/online journals we undeservedly (ie, unabashedly) link to: we're always reading you - especially when we're scrambling like frenzied chickens far from here, you, & saner realities.

Semper Fi, FOB brothers and sisters; keep the barbarian in us and other at bay for yet another night.

Black & White - All-American Manchurians

Pick the true Manchurian. One can't go further awry than granny did on her 401(k).

O(b/s)ama

As if being Kenyan weren't bad enough, John Ray at Stop the ACLU reports that Obama is also Indonesian according to another birth certificate and that he traveled to Pakistan in 1981 on an Indonesian passport where he no doubt met with members of Al Qaeda.

...or

McShame (and this supplementary)

...but John McCain—there has always been talk, and there’s evidence to suggest that there is truth in this, but it’s in his head, and only he and his psychiatrist, if he has one, know, that he—his reasons are that if the North—if the Vietnamese were to release all the information they have on him, the full text of his confessions, how he lived the details, because there have been stories, again, just rumors, that he was provided with a woman companion, and all kinds of things like that, which are—can’t be considered as fact, because they’ve never been confirmed, and very, very difficult, if not impossible, to confirm.

PS (We wish we knew as much about the AQ mindset that we do of the commy ditto - ergo this lopsided post scriptum. (We're really really old school gals)):

We have had doubts about the story of McCain's "heroism" in "refusing early release" from the North Vietnamese.

AFAWK, when Commies run detention facilities, THEY make the rules. If they thought that giving McCon's early release would have gained them propaganda points, they would have sent him back to daddy CINCPAC. He wouldn't have had any say in the decision, wethinks.

Fear and Loathing in Iraq

Slipstreaming behind our previous post Holding Pattern - The Iraq Stack, WaPo's Ignatius brings us this incidental:

Iraq hasn't gotten much attention recently in the American presidential campaign, thanks to the reduction in violence there, but U.S. policymakers are increasingly worried about what's ahead.

The negotiations to complete a new status-of-forces agreement for U.S. troops are deadlocked. With a Dec. 31 deadline approaching, Baghdad and Washington seem to be running out of bargaining room. The Iraqis are determined to assert their sovereignty through legal jurisdiction over U.S. forces, while American officials are demanding broad protections from Iraqi law until U.S. troops are gone in 2011.

U.S. officials are warning that if the talks remain stalled, there isn't an easy Plan B, such as a new U.N. Security Council resolution to replace the one that expires at year's end and now provides the legal mandate for American troops.

"I've tried to make clear the consequences of not getting a SOFA agreement," Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told me in a telephone interview yesterday. "The Iraqis should be under no illusion that a rollover of the U.N. resolution would be an easy option." He said the United States would refuse anything but a clean, one-year extension of the current U.N. mandate -- meaning that the Iraqis would lose the gains they have won in the new status-of-forces agreement.

Crocker said he has advised the Iraqis that without some formal mandate, U.S. troops will return to their bases Jan. 1. "Without legal authority to operate, we do not operate," he said. "That means no security operations, no logistics, no training, no support for Iraqis on the borders, no nothing."

Iraq has been regarded as such a success story in recent months that many have forgotten that all the old cleavages still exist -- Sunni vs. Shiite, Kurd vs. Arab, regional autonomy vs. central government. With growing uncertainty about the future of U.S. forces in the country, these tensions are returning with a vengeance.

Mistrust between Kurds and Arabs almost led to a military confrontation in the Khanaqin area northeast of Baghdad in August. The Kurds had moved their pesh merga militia into the mixed Kurdish-Arab area, prompting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to deploy Iraqi army troops and order the Kurdish forces to leave. Crocker admonished both sides not to make stupid miscalculations, and U.S. commanders warned that they wouldn't come to Maliki's rescue. The overmatched Iraqi army retreated, but the crisis left bitter feelings on all sides.

"The Kurds still see things as a zero-sum game, as does everyone else," grumbles another senior U.S. official who has been deeply involved in the negotiations. Jockeying among the Shiite parties has been especially intense, he says, with none of the Shiite leaders wanting the potential stigma of supporting the SOFA deal.

Iran is waging an aggressive covert-action campaign to derail the agreement, U.S. officials say. The new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, highlighted Tehran's push last week when he said Iranian operatives had been seeking to bribe Iraqi members of parliament to reject the pact when it comes up for a vote.

This public allegation of Iranian meddling drew a rebuke from Maliki, but U.S. officials say they have recently intercepted Iranian couriers carrying suitcases of money to pay bribes and political subsidies to pro-Iranian parties. It isn't clear whether the United States is mounting a covert effort of its own to counter the Iranian campaign.

The Iranians obviously want to limit U.S. influence in the new Iraq by defeating the status-of-forces agreement and in the process hand America a strategic defeat. But some top U.S. officials think the Iranians have a more fundamental goal in pushing U.S. forces out before the Iraqis are ready to take over -- namely, bringing a final, decisive resolution to the Iraq-Iran war that ended in a 1988 truce. "Now, 20 years later, they have an opportunity to win that war," the official argued.

"My one-word definition of Iraq is 'fear,' " says Crocker. "Everybody is afraid of everybody. They're afraid of the past, present and future. They're afraid of the consequences of signing an agreement. But they should be even more afraid of the consequences of not signing."

Straight to the Heart - Tête-à-Tête Cyberattacks

Today many hit the internet's WWW for its plethora of social networks, browsing from a distance through server-side catalogs aggregating and organizing the personal profiles of millions.

Tomorrow we will be able to surf and process the profiles of people as we encounter them irl and on the fly: adjacent soccer dads and fellow pedestrians work bound - the bounty will be plenty and immediate. This brown eyed Denny's cashier - I wonder if my dating profile and credit score matches his secret longings for a suave one night stand? (Heck, I even think some of the SMC crew have patents pending for such technology).

Already scenarios are in play that consider the hazards of tête-à-tête cyberhits. A nifty vector of opportunity for assassins and deformed love seekers?

Excerpts below from the report, Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses [14-page pdf]:

Wirelessly reprogrammable implantable medical devices(IMDs) such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), neurostimulators, and implantable drug pumps use embedded computers and radios to monitor chronic disorders and treat patients with automatic therapies.

For instance, an ICD that senses a rapid heartbeat can administer an electrical shock to restore a normal heart rhythm, then later report this event to a health care practitioner who uses a commercial device programmer1 with wireless capabilities to extract data from the ICD or modify its settings without surgery.

Between 1990 and 2002, over 2.6 million pacemakers and ICDs were implanted in patients in the United States; clinical trials have shown that these devices significantly improve survival rates in certain populations. Other research has discussed potential security and privacy risks of IMDs, but we are unaware of any rigorous public investigation into the observable characteristics of a real commercial device. Without such a study, it is impossible for the research community to assess or address the security and privacy properties of past, current, and future devices. We address that gap in this paper and, based on our findings, propose and implement several prototype attack-mitigation techniques.

We assess the security and privacy properties of a common ICD and present attacks on privacy, integrity, and availability. We show that the ICD discloses sensitive information in the clear (unencrypted); we demonstrate a reprogramming attack that changes the operation of (and the information contained in) the ICD; and we give evidence that a battery-powered ICD can be made to communicate indefinitely with an unauthenticated device, thereby posing a potential denial-of-service risk. All of our attacks can be mounted by an unauthorized party equipped with a specially configured radio communicator within range of the ICD.

Attack scenarios. Since health care is a very sensitive and personal subject for many people, we explicitly choose to deviate from standard practice in the academic security research community and do not describe specific scenarios in which an attacker might compromise the privacy or health of a victim. We also do not discuss the potential impact on patients if an adversary were to carry out an attack in vivo. Rather, when discussing attacks we focus solely on the technical properties of those attacks. In addition, in each case where we identify a vulnerability, we propose a solution or technical direction to mitigate it.

Further resources available through the Medical Device Security Center.

Shift To Shape

Two fine posts (FabMax & Kent's) about smothered writings of deserved heed upon shabby and beckoning ol' walls got us mulling over the divides & gangways between intelligence analysts, prophets, and your regular old soothsaying hacks.

Alerting graffiti (that simultaneously dire and decorative kind) conjectured by all manner a premonitory scribbler abounds: Alien invasion fleets lurking to pounce upon our welfare states from behind the innocent moon. Decadently chateau'd and beak-nosed Rothchildians colluding with coffin-masturbating and creaky old Anglo-satanists for nation-killing and Jesus-ushering global hegemony. Or exploitative street urchins the likes of a Soros or a Lahde publicly accenting Bubble. What the heck is actionable enough to cling to?

Save our souls, Brother - and do tell us before we're all, excuse our French, glass'd, "Which of the millennial incomers is the MIRV and what be the swarm of Siberian-mined aluminum chaff?"

The good analyst but strives to describe a sliver of a moment - now or then.

Prophets haphazardly foresee an amalgamated potpourri of such interconnected moments and invariably get viciously bled and quartered for such un-summoned community service, well rudely ante their utterances are sufficiently Youtube'd for fair chance at corralling abidance.

Soothsayers. Well hey, they're those commonsensical sounding folks with scary pluperfect hair resolutely appearing on CGI'd cable news - and who are almost always wrong in, alas, non-existent retrospect.

Prediction is but for the shaper. Such sculpting animal takes, or leaves, the goodies of the varyingly vying Trinitians under its driven behest and proceeds unflinchingly onwards as myopic molder. Futures made are oft born of steamrolling sows, obliterating difference in fidelity between the considered input of indentured drudge and freelancing druid.

Caught in a cacophony of determined advice, admonition, and analysis, perhaps it's fair to turn deaf ears to courting lips and rear pasty asses t'wards our strong sun and meekly ask, "Who's the shaper now?"

Now a wee diddy`bout oil pricing.

Oil prices seem to be in free-fall. After averaging a staggering $137 a barrel over the first week of July, they were down to $109 a barrel over the final week of August.

Where are prices going next? Who knows? Bearish talk about bubbles bursting and bullish talk about peak oil disguise the fact that the future direction of oil prices is unknown and unknowable. Neither investors nor politicians ought to be betting the economic house on any particular vision of "our energy future."

The fundamental reason for the difficulty associated with forecasting future oil prices is the fact that both demand and supply are relatively inelastic over the short term. That means rather small changes in either can have very large price effects. Hence, those who wish to forecast oil prices are forced to forecast weather patterns, labor relations, gross domestic product (GDP) reports, demographic trends, civil unrest and technological change in all sorts of disparate economic sectors.

Long-run forecasts are no easier to execute. Professor Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba has cataloged the vast record of energy forecasts offered by academics, corporations, consultants, trade associations, government agencies, "blue ribbon" commissions, policy activists and "futurists" of all stripes over the past 100 years and finds a "a manifest record of failure." There is simply no reason to believe that mere mortals can foretell oil prices or petroleum market shares in the future, absent some sort of time machine. (Read more)

Cross-Border Tweaks And Twitters

Though certainly not frantically akin to the complexities inherent U.S. military cross-border excursions into Pakistan, the Turkish situation does perhaps remind us of the interplay such junkets can bring to bear on the complex matrix of perception shaping - for better or worse.

Turkey's AKP government has been engaged in hitherto secretive talks with Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomous regional government (KRG) as part of a new play to come to terms with the PKK's escalating attacks into Turkey from bases inside Iraq - and perhaps more importantly/ realistically as a means of capping Turkish domestic dissatisfaction with how the AKP government is seemingly failing to come to resolving terms with Kurd-related strife.

Simultaneous to the talks, Turkey is conducting cross-border aerial bombardment sorties against PKK bases inside Iraqi Kurdistan and has done so ever since October 3 when a PKK commando unit launched an attack from within Iraq against the border posting of Aktutun, smoking 17 Turkish soldiers.

Ankara seems somewhat set on reaching a cooperation agreement (i.e. a commitment by the KRG to deploy military assets against the PKK, though Kurds aren't exactly known for whacking other Kurds en masse - especially when such internecine action risks coming off as running errands for foreign meddlers) - or at the very least, and perhaps foremost so - Ankara appears adamant in shaping a perception among its domestic audience of evolving a new predisposition towards fielding a wider spectrum of approaches vis-à-vis the pesky Kurd.

By opening up an official dialogue with the Kurds - albeit with Iraqi Kurds - the AKP government hopes to sufficiently quell escalating domestic voices pressuring Ankara to take a more political and culturally accommodating approach to some of the not entirely unreasonable aspirations of their own Kurds - if only to erode the PKK's popular base. The KRG's prime minister Nechirvan Barzani is soon bound for Ankara so perhaps some modicum of sly win-win gambit is gaining traction.

From previously making due with boomeranging out blame across the fence at the Iraqi Kurds for tolerating and supporting the PKK, the AKP government's new maneuver to appease domestic audiences by publicly announcing that dialogue with the Kurds is no longer taboo seems not all that mute . Almost as to underscore quelling intentions, Turkish President Gül is pretty much already on his way to Emerald City to liaise with President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari - both conveniently Kurds. If nothing deployably pointy comes out of the karsilamas then at least the top level posturing will perhaps work the AKP's way as a placating gesture to shore up the rustling domestic flank.

Iraqi Kurdistan's KRG has also been voicing a change in tone towards the PKK with the likes of a "Hey PKK, `nuff with those riling cross border excursions into Turkey or you'll have to move on elsewhere" or a "Yo Gül, we're always open for a constructive discussion on mutual problems". So far however, it's been all smoke and no neighbourly Ka-boom from the KRG.

Come end of day, one of our less skewed guesses would be that it will take a not so minor doctrinal revolution among the shadow-casters of the deep state establishment before any decisively empowered lurking Turk seriously considers deploying approaches beyond the capacity of what the Neo-Ottoman's old kinetic toolbox has to offer. Public sentiment inside Turkey still has a funny knack of often cascading a little short of what many might feel is far enough.

And now to an article in another day's Today's Zaman

A Turkish delegation headed by Turkey's special envoy to Iraq, Murat Özçelik, had talks with Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani in Baghdad on Tuesday, in a landmark meeting to discuss cooperation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which launches attacks on Turkey from its northern Iraqi bases.

Speaking after the talks, Turkey's first official contact with the Kurdish leader in recent years, Özçelik declined to make specific comments on the content of the discussions but said he had outlined what could be done in the fight against terrorism, adding that Barzani responded "positively" to Turkey's demands.

The Iraqi Kurds, for their part, said they are ready to work with Turkey to find a solution. "The two sides agreed to turn a new page and continue talks," said Faisal Dabbagh, a spokesman for Barzani. He stated that the Kurdish leader said the terror problem should be resolved through politics and dialogue and that the Kurdish administration was ready to give support in every way.

"This was the first meeting in a long time. The meeting was positive. It was a good step to develop ties," senior Kurdish official Fouad Hussein told the private Cihan news agency.

Turkey notes that there has been a change in the Kurdish administration's rhetoric on Turkey's anti-PKK efforts recently, but complains no visible progress has been achieved in meeting a set of concrete expectations. Ankara expects the Iraqi Kurds to arrest and extradite PKK chieftains, to designate the group a terrorist organization and to close down PKK-linked organizations operating in northern Iraq.

Ankara had refused to talk to the Iraqi Kurds, accusing them of supporting the PKK. Özçelik and the chief foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Ahmet Davuto?lu, met with Kurdish official Nechirvan Barzani in May, launching an era of dialogue with the Kurdish administration.

Yesterday's talks with Massoud Barzani are a test proving whether dialogue with the Iraqi Kurds could pave the way for cooperation against the PKK, according to Turkish officials.

The Turkish delegation also met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The meeting in Baghdad underscores the pressure facing the Turkish government to respond forcefully to attacks launched by the PKK from its mountain camps in Kurdish-run northern Iraq. Maliki expressed regret over an Oct. 3 attack that killed 17 Turkish soldiers and said the Iraqi people were "ashamed" that the PKK is using the Iraqi territory to launch attacks on Turkey. He also said this "trouble" should be removed.

The talks in Baghdad come as President Abdullah Gül prepares to visit Iraq. The presidency has denied recent reports in the Turkish media that he has been also invited to Arbil during his stay. Speaking yesterday before traveling to Germany to inaugurate an international book fair, Gül said he is planning to go to Baghdad but declined to comment on details, saying no date has yet been set. "I earlier announced my intention to travel to Baghdad, but work to set a date and a schedule for this visit has not yet started," Gül said.

The level and intensity of future talks are likely to be determined based on the results from yesterday's talks with Massoud Barzani. The government, cautious about the possible failure of talks with Barzani, had avoided top-level meetings with the Iraqi Kurdish leader, expecting him to take more steps to prove his commitment to supporting Turkey's anti-terror efforts. Nechirvan Barzani raised hopes about cooperation against the PKK, calling for dialogue with Ankara to discuss possible cooperation.

Pass It On - Love Grind Part One

Let us not be such cynics so as to titulate this post Cross-branding Selves. Instead...

Time has long prior to now drawn nigh to near to giving this long pre-meditated post hierurgical wings - only to find us so often as always procrastinating out of true blue fear of doing injustice to the worthy yet woefully bypassed (per way of banal martini-omissionism).

But to heck with such introspective Lutheran incontinence - it gets so fuzzy. Here instead goes a skanky SMC Sally loose with an achingly pregnant and amorous tirade. So batton down and buckle up, Lassie. We think you suspect by now that we're going for the big ugly. Some call it love.

Effwit (and its politically skullduggerous harlot) An outstanding counter-shaded slacker. But hey, hermaphrodite buddy - reign in your compulsive Writ large-isms and you could stumble far beyond yo' anti-oxidatin' green tea-quaffing Embassy Row townhouse commy-subsistence.)

Imperatating Kent's- Possibly the best esoteric blog in the Die Wilde Jagd. If only the imperatators could rid themselves of their own occasional, albeit only sub-textual, writ large-isms.

MountainRunner's Matt - There's an eclectic and weird cluster of blogs about Matt that has cornered the market of clean & elegantly detached graphic design. Unfortunately Matt rather recently chose to cross brand his SoCal mug with his otherwise aesthetically pleasing journal - how unfortunate for all but most kind He.

We like to tell ourselves we found Matt before he learned to crawl - and now the clever cat trail-blazes. Pan for gold with us and be richer.

Follow Matt if you're serious 'bout tax-subsidized mindbending - he keeps tabs on the (r)evolving bureaucracy of IO and PD like certainly no other and gasping runner up. At such task, he's both reasonably brave and charitably looking to enhance the regular mediocrity with his absolutely other-enhancing employment. We refuse to punt our dear and massive pool of Eurodollars on the side of any U.S.-led adventurism lest brilliant and willing MountainRunner man is made decisive shotgunner within DoD or State. Wise up, GS'ers.

John Brown's PD Review Thanks - and thanks Tri-pawed.

Hafty - Finally a thinly veiled unromantic - and incomparably qualified iconoclast at that. If you don't get nobody's bitch's cryptics then nobody's bitch's cryptics ain't for you to feed off. Tough luck, Citizen Al-Dorito.

As with all of the above journals, Haft's shack of due irreverence is where a decisive slice of it be at. Don't take our word on that.

Secrecy News What can an inebriated stutterer mutter but: hated by some but always a tenaciously exploitable and delving other. Steve Aftergood can buy us yet another drink any ol' or comin' time. This time though, it's on us - not.

Pass It On - Love Grind Part Two next up.

Love Me

Under a most quaint plan being considered by the British Government, Afghans would be given handsets and access to the internet to help them gain their own voice.

It follows a growing realization in Washington and Whitehall that the allies are being outflanked by the Taliban in the battle to reach ordinary Afghans.

Sharing video clips is popular in Afghanistan where there are an estimated 6 million mobiles and around half a million internet users.

However, most of the footage is anti-Western propaganda created by the Taliban. It often includes footage of civilians apparently killed in US raids and is widely circulated in the country by phone and internet.

The allies' reputation was particularly damaged by film [YouTube-CNN] of around 90 civilians - many of them children - killed in a US-led bombing raid in August.

The British government's proposal would involve non-governmental organizations distributing mobile phones to Afghans to encourage them to make video diaries.

Devised by an outside consultant, the plan is said by the Foreign Office to "have merit". The BBC reported that the plan, part of a British Government-commissioned report by an outside consultant, would be used to record up to 100 video diaries for a film festival next year.

A spokesman for the UKs Department for International Development (DfID) said: "An external consultant has proposed a scheme but absolutely no decision has been made and it would be wrong to suggest that DfID will fund it."

Whitehall officials (Whitehall officials sounds so logarithmically better than Whitehall Turkeys) have said the aim is to deprive the Taliban of its virtual monopoly on propaganda using new media.

The once media-shy Taliban have gone hi-tech with DVDs, mobile phone messages, ring-tones, emails and a website to publicize their exploits and lambast their Afghan and Western enemies, a think-tank said on Thursday.

The Taliban hanged televisions and music tapes from trees in an effort to stamp out corrupting Western influences during their hardline Islamist rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Their leaders had only one computer, Afghanistan experts say.

But after U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the austere movement following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the militants regrouped and relaunched their insurgency in 2005, copying the tactics of roadside and suicide bombs from Iraq.

Now the Taliban have also created a "sophisticated communications apparatus" using the full range of media allowing them to project an "increasingly confident movement", the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in last summer's report Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?[47-page pdf].

With their own website, magazines, DVDs, audio cassettes, pamphlets and mobile phones, the ICG says, the Taliban are able to capitalize on mistakes made by the government and its allies and reveal their own "inflated tales of battlefield exploits".

Taliban statements emailed to the media talk of killing "puppet terrorists", meaning Afghan security forces, and destroying "occupation tanks" and seizing their arms.

So-called night-letters are delivered to homes warning Afghans against cooperating with the government and international troops, while DVDs, text and video messages are aimed at the more tech savvy.

The ICG said the Afghan government and its allies must try harder to combat weakening public support and alienation caused by arbitrary detentions and civilian casualties which the Taliban are able to exploit through their media.

"Whatever the military benefits of arbitrary detentions, they are far outweighed by the alienation they cause," the ICG said.

A series of air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan in the last month, Afghan officials say, have killed more than 60 civilians.

"The effectiveness of aerial bombardment, even if strictly exercised within the bounds of international law, must be considered against the damage to popular support," the ICG said.

The Taliban, it said, are not going to be defeated militarily and are resistant to outside criticism.

"Rather the legitimacy of its ideas and actions must be challenged more forcefully by the Afghan government and citizens," the ICG said.

Militants should be held to public account for killing civilians and targeting community leaders through open trials, and the Afghan government and its international allies should similarly be bound by the rule of law, the ICG said.

Ultimately, winning popular support is not about telling local communities that they are better off today. It is about proving it.

If Afghan civilians continue to perceive civilian deaths as being directly attributable to our presence & activities within their country and tribal regions then those - per proposed plan - distributed handsets could come back to bite us with a fresh swarm of pesky video snippets. It all sounds rather risky, if not downright desperate, given the present state of affairs in injun country. We assume there is buried within the report a suggestion to track the freebie phones - though such easily unveiled intention in itself could very well be grounds for seeing our phones, and the subcontracty plan, smashed to bits.