INSIGHT ON SOCIAL ACTIVIST GROUPS

In today’s operating environment, competitors are using integrated marketing communication to acquire market share.

Competitive Intelligence helps organizations generate early warning by helping organizations interpret competitor’s de-positioning tactics.

Public Relations is a lethal tool of competitive intelligence which organizations use to influence public perception which results in creating a buzz in the market which helps in retaining market share.

Public Relations is a communication tool which motivates behavior resulting in improved market share.

Competitive Intelligence is a tool used to help clients manage issues by combining influences of public attitudes, public perceptions, public behavior and public policy.

This way we see that a simple tool of public relations in competitive intelligence gives a greater RoI which help companies in positioning themselves as a brand.

In the long run it is about incubating a brand and sustaining it and eventually creating a differentiation based on quality, service and competence.

In the normal day to day positioning of organizations, PR helps a company to reposition itself.

Using competitive intelligence, public relations is used to create third party endorsements which results in manipulating public behavior.

What matters is that does the market hold our organization in positive light and this is possible by subtly manipulating market perception using an emotional connect to our brand.

Competitive Intelligence uses poll technique combined with demographic and psychographic profiling based on analysis of information to find out what images and messages will resonate with target audiences to be competitive, organizations monitor competition, spread disinformation and rally citizen groups to raise issues thereby de-positioning competitors in the minds of the wider target audience.

Competitive Intelligence can be used for managing public relations and mitigating crisis and neutralize competitor’s grass roots activist groups. It also helps us identify radicals, opportunists, idealists and realists’ activist groups of competitors which they use to spread this information.

Competitive Intelligence enables us to manage the corporate risks of social activist groups which can be achieved in the following manner i.e. isolating the radicals, cultivating and educating the idealists into realists and finally co-opting the realists. The ‘radicals’ used by competitors may have the agenda of generating political empowerment and social justice that can be marginalized and discredited.

The idealists used by competitors are exposed to reeducation and psychological persuasion using competitive intelligence. Pragmatic realists and opportunists are manipulated through trade-offs and perceptions of “partial victories”.

Competitors manipulate citizen groups and fake grass roots mobilization, in other words it means Astroturfing. Some competitors may use viral marketing techniques but if we have our counterintelligence in place, we can prevent competitors from manipulating market perception.

Information

Information

Information is data joined in revealing ways. Information collection is a very important part of intelligence cycle.

Information can be collected through passive intelligence and semi active intelligence and active intelligence.

When we collect information, we need to evaluate sources of information. We need to list the sources we have found and type of information the source provides.

Collection of information results in using different kinds of sources and for this we need to classify sources and rate them. We need to understand whether the source provides facts or does the source provide information from experts who are sure of their facts or does the source just provides personal opinion. Classifying sources on the basis of whether it is a fact or  authority or  opinion or not verifiable sources helps you understand the authenticity of the information you have collected.

In planning stage when you work on key intelligence topics, you need to understand whether the  information you require is available in passive intelligence or semi active intelligence or active intelligence. Now the sources that you have identified are they facts or expert information from experts or just a personal opinion. When you verify the information you need to segment the information as facts and authority and opinion and unconfirmed sources.

This is just the start of the information collection journey.

Five Force Analysis

Five Force Analysis

Competitive intelligence involves monitoring the operating environment. We need to monitor the suppliers, customers, substitution effect, threat of new entrants and competitive rivalry in the market place.

What we need to understand that a supplier of today could become a parallel or latent or existing competitor tomorrow and if we are able to monitor suppliers we can anticipate whether they will be going in for  related diversification or unrelated diversification or backward of forward integration for being competitive in the market place.

This we call early warning if we are able to detect much in advance. A supplier of yesterday could become a lateral competitor or parallel competitor or existing competitor of tomorrow.

We need to monitor the substitution effect ie the lateral competitors and parallel competitors who eat into our market share. Competitive intelligence helps us identify competitors who eat into the market share by offering substitution alternatives to customers. These competitors who are our parallel competitors of today could become existing competitors of tomorrow who by using related diversification could contest for the same market space.

Customers need to be monitored to work on customer acquisition and customer retention efforts. When we monitor our customers and competitors customers we are able to plan our customer acquisition and customer retention strategies. Inputs for creating a ladder of loyalty are generated here and we can move the existing customer to becoming a client and a client to becoming a supporter and a supporter to becoming an advocate of our products and services who by word of mouth publicity generate goodwill can create positive perception in the eyes of the target segment.

New entrants need to be monitored as they would compete with us for the market space.

Anew entrant could be a existing competitor who is using either low cost or best cost or differentiation or focused low cost or focused differentiation strategy to reposition in the market segment. On the other hand a new entrant could be a lateral competitor who enters into our market space through unrelated diversification or backward or forward integration or related diversification. Further a new entrant could be a parallel competitor who may become our existing competitor through related diversification or backward or forward integration.

Further we need to keep our eye on the ball and monitor our existing competitors who may be low cost option providers and now are considering differentiation or best cost strategy to enter into our market space.

The ability to anticipate competitor movement by understanding strategic options is another way to being competitive. An existing competitor may use strategic options such as low cost or differentiation or best cost or focused low cost or focused differentiation and effect our market share.

Further when we monitor the environment and analyze the information we are able to use role playing and scenarios to generate early warning.

Is the 9/11 Catastrophe Still Relevant?

The 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) happened some time ago, and for many who were not involved the memory fades.  No one wants to remember a Horror as the emotions can only take so much tragedy before gloom or depression sets in and that affects the enjoyment of one’s daily life, if such a life is enjoyable.

I suggest that it doesn’t really matter when an important event occurred so much as that it did occur.  Major events, even ancient events, form the furrows of character on a nation’s face.  Also, I suggest that a major event is not so important if it is only a ‘one off’ and unlikely to ever again be experienced.  9/11 is an event that is part of the present reality, it had a large impact on people’s lives, on the economy, and on how people saw their nation as being perceived by unrelated predators who were on a far horizon.  When something holds itself up as being good, then many arise who wish to conquer it, or tear it down.  New York is still a target, and 9/11 (or 1993) is a re-occurable event.  Why is that?   New York  represents the specialness of American culture.  It represents the ultimate success of that culture despite many real and unpleasant set-backs such as economic downturns.  A Phoenix, it ever arises from the ashes of the past.  An ever newly lit flame for the statue of Liberty.  So many tourists go to New York to visit that congested and expensive city, yet so many come away expressing a new dream of one day going back to live there.  A city of course is much more than just a friendly people, but a friendly people are always a necessity for an ideal city or home.  Home is not only where the heart is, it is where the heart is allowed to be free.

New York was attacked in recent times by terrorists, or if you will, by violent extremists, or by whatever they are called in the current jargon that does not to tread on delicate toes.  When one label gets tainted by too much blood and suffering it is stashed away and a new label applied, like one band-aid on top of another, for one must always be politically correct or suffer abuse as being demeaning and insensitive to a vicious enemy.  As blunt speaking may stir an enemy up to attack more often.  Diplomacy is not meant to be cowardice, but it is clearly interpreted as such by any enemy whose group culture only respects using force against whoever seems weak.  Apparent weakness, like a bull’s-eyed target, draws arrows.  One doesn’t want to offend a bully by calling him a criminal or use harsh words to describe harsh deeds, as that might require courage and courage is only honored by warriors, not by citizens drugged on dreams of peace.  A softer term for terrorists now-a-days is ‘The Bad Guys’ as that projects who is deemed right or wrong without bringing up images of deliberate beheadings of civilians, stoning of women, poison gassing schoolgirls who want to learn, blowing up these plus children in deliberate acts, all this not even being accidental as collateral damage in a war zone.  The Bad Guys are simply ‘Bad’, as gangsters see themselves jokingly as ‘Good’, as in ‘The Good Guys’.  That is ‘good’ for their own benefit not others.  They mean Good in an ironic sense.  As who holds and uses the ‘iron’, is who fires the bullets.

The original terrorist hijackers died in the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon and Washington years ago.  If that were all then it would have been a one-off event.  However those gangsters were not alone, they belonged to a group.  A group that still exists with changes in leaders and franchises and computer internet promotions.  They attacked in 1993, and 2001 and their intent, as they themselves express it, is to attack again.  Therefore the long ago attack on the WTC is very much relevant today.  Relevant except for those whose head is in the sand.  Those people tend to die first: as they are not even watching to take common safety steps, steps needed in any crisis.  Hopefully they have not buried their head next to an IED or land-mine.  Also the Bad Guys no longer only arise in far away lands where they are ignorant and do not experience any joys of American life.  Many Bad Guys are now home-grown, American citizens, even drawing benefits from the Treasury.  They know that there are joys in American life that are worth living for and fighting for, even though life is still a struggle.  If you want more struggle just try living somewhere else.  When people migrate from other parts of the world, even die trying to get to America, it tells you that they know on what side of the world’s bread the butter is on.  The trouble is that they are often people from scarred lands with scarred souls who bring their troubled mental baggage with them.

So I would say that America and its major cities are a prize that should be appreciated more by its own citizens, that there are Bad Guys intent on bringing it down, and that Americans should awake and fight for what their culture represents, even if is very imperfect, for if they don’t they will be a chapter in future history books.  Reading: There was a great civilization once, like Rome, called the U.S.A., and like all great civilizations that fought many enemies and that are now no more, it died from a disintegration from within.

WHITE NOISE – THE QUICK SAND

Organizations face complex problems during extraction and analysis of data using open source intelligence emissions.

One of the major problems is the influence of white noise on the accurate perception. If a company is exposed to white noise and conflicting stimuli and data, it creates a deep interference with accurate perception even after better information becomes available later on during analysis stage.

For instance, a person exposed to distorted and hazy picture will make pre-conceptions of the information and will develop more confidence in it. This means initial impression of information will have more impact on subsequent perceptions.

When the image becomes clearer, new data is imbibed into the previous image but we maintain the initial perception and develop resistance to changed image until the contradiction becomes so strong and obvious that it forces itself upon consciousness.

Most of the companies perceive that the early information required to make an initial interpretation is sufficient, but we should not forget that early but incorrect impression tends to endure.

The amount of information to nullify a hypothesis is significantly greater than the amount of information required to make an initial judgments.

The difficulty companies’ face is not in acquiring new perceptions or new ideas, but that already established perceptions meet with resistance.

On availability of very little information, many companies tend to form their assumptions that are not rejected or changed unless rather firm and extensive evidence forces them to reconsider the analysis.

Hence, the impact of pre- existing assumptions and expectations on perception of inputs leads to the ambiguity of the inputs and results in dissonance.

The company’s analysts own pre- conceptions exert a big impact, despite striving for objectivity.

Corporate Risks deals with such highly ambiguous situations as here analysts suspend the pre- existing notions for as long as possible and efficiently extract and analyze valid information from the information emissions in the environment.

In intelligence, we need to join the dots. So how can we join the dots?

We need to separate information from white noise. White noise is like quick sand, the more we delve into it without being focused results in organization seeing an incorrect picture. The problems in data extraction may present a different picture because of the ability or inability of the operator who is gathering information.

We need to strike a balance between what we want to achieve and what the information reflects.

Thinking About the Business of Intelligence:What the World Economic Crisis Should Teach Us

Thinking About the Business of Intelligence

What the World Economic Crisis Should Teach Us

By Carmen Medina and Rebecca Fisher

This article is based on a presentation made to a conference on the future of intelligence in May 2009.

There is much for intelligence professionals to learn from the follies of economists, and from this folly in particular.

“Why did economists not do a better job anticipating the crisis?” was the question everyone seemed to be asking as the global economy began to unravel last fall. The consensus seems to be that most economists not only failed to see the crisis coming but also were downright hostile to the few who argued that The Great Moderation—the era of economic stability brought about by modern banking system controls—wasn’t so great after all.

New York Times columnist (and 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics) Paul Krugman was ridiculed for much of this decade.1 Another harbinger named Danny Schechter wrote a book that 30 publishers rejected because they believed he was exaggerating. His book, Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, finally went to print in September 2008, just as the implosion was getting under way.

As economists wrote about not having done a better job anticipating the meltdown, it became apparent that there were parallel take-aways for analysis in the field of intelligence. There is, in fact, much for intelligence professionals to learn from the follies of economists, and from this folly in particular. Warren Buffet’s 2002 Berkshire Hathaway annual report hinted at such an association when he used the term “financial weapons of mass destruction” to describe the derivative asset class. When one of the world’s most respected businessmen borrows from the intelligence lexicon, turnabout is fair play.

Though we probably don’t need much reminding, it may be helpful to recall how the economic crisis evolved and the extent to which it radiated out. Anyone who has looked at his brokerage accounts or her retirement portfolio lately already “gets it” at the macro level. But what exactly happened on the cellular level to get us to where we ended up? And what can we, as intelligence professionals, learn from those events?

Twenty years ago, economists—quite important ones—did see a game-changing financial crisis looming, although without any specificity as to its timing. In a conference organized in 1989 by the National Bureau of Economic Research to consider the risk of economic crisis, Lawrence Summers—then a professor of economics at Harvard University—presented a paper that tracked, in impressively close formation, with the timeline of today’s crisis. With uncanny prescience, Summers wrote:

It is probably now easier to lever assets than ever before, and the combination of reduced transactions costs and new markets in derivative securities make it easier than it has been in the past for the illusion of universal liquidity to take hold. Asset price bubbles are now as likely as they have ever been. Bubbles eventually burst. The increased speed with which information diffuses and the increased use of quantitative-rule-based trading strategies make it likely that they will burst more quickly today than they have in the past.

As far back as 20 years ago Summers was writing about the increased speed at which information can disseminate and contagion can occur. Yet, when CNN International’s Richard Quest interviewed world economic leaders in January 2008 at the Davos Summit, only half of those asked said they thought the then new, disturbing reports about the housing crisis and equity problems would extend beyond the banking industry.

The fact is that most economists and business experts did not anticipate this economic regression, or its particular timing, with any great degree of specificity, despite the astute analysis of Larry Summers and a few other highly regarded theorists. Economist James Galbraith estimated that, out of thousands of economists, perhaps only eight or 10 individuals really saw the crisis coming.3 Harsh as it may seem, his estimate is more generally true than not. But in the wake of calamity, the profession has vigorously begun its own “after action review”—with all kinds of lessons emerging in its own ranks, in the press, and in classrooms across the country. The difficulty is choosing just a few to single out as particularly relevant to the intelligence profession.

Six lessons from the economists’ experience seem to have unique applicability to what we, as intelligence professionals, do.

Leaving behind the issues of bias on the part of economists (which has already been discussed among intelligence officers, along many dimensions) and “group-think” because, again, we are deeply familiar with these pitfalls, six lessons from the economists’ experience seem to have unique applicability to what we, as intelligence professionals, do.

Lesson 1: There are no easy, obvious, straightforward policy responses to the economic crisis.

Once a financial crisis begins, there are no simple or clear policy responses; in reality, every policy response will inevitably feed back onto the economic crisis, for better or worse (in the tradition of the adage “When Alan Greenspan sneezes, the world catches a cold.”). For example, Summers described the range of possible policy responses to economic crises to include:

• The laissez-faire position, which holds there is no reason for public intervention in financial markets.
• The monetarist position: that the only appropriate government role is to insulate the money stock from developments, i.e., declines, in asset markets.
• The classical position, which argues that the government, as lender of last resort, should only lend to solvent banks, at a penalty rate, for short periods of time.
• The pragmatic position, which says the government must always do whatever is necessary to preserve the integrity of the financial system.

All of these, even the option of doing nothing, have impacts on the crisis itself: an expansive monetary policy can lead to a currency crisis, which could in turn lead foreigners to sell, putting further downward pressure on assets and placing more strain on the financial system, which is where we started in the first place.

Admittedly, the issue of policy response is not part of the answer to the question of why economists missed important warning signs. But it is an object lesson in why responding to crises is so perilous: decisions can be dangerous, even those made with the best intentions. In this respect, the issue of policy response suggests a certain truth that intelligence professionals are wise to ponder: We often assume decisions are the start of long term, committed relationships—but sometimes decision making is just a one night stand. In the endless courting that occurs between intelligence professionals and policymakers, we, the intelligence professionals, often behave as if our version of the truth—our “decisions”—take on Talmudic proportions (only this, one might argue, could justify the time it often takes us to deliver our considered judgments). We treat the decision space as though it is preparation for a committed relationship, but quite often the decision—frequently a not-very-clear choice among several other equally reasonable options—will be amended rather quickly, or overtaken by events even sooner.

Furthermore, decisions are rarely made in the full possession of perfect information, another reason they lack staying power. Our understanding of causality and sequence leaves much to be desired, and every day that passes offers more opportunities for new decisions that will affect the context of any given problem.

Lesson 2: We are overly sanguine about how close our information and intelligence sources approximate reality.

Our understanding of causality and sequence leaves much to be desired.

The second lesson from the global financial crisis is that economists thought their limited data accurately reflected reality. Famously, many of the financial houses in New York quantified their risk positions using algorithms that “assumed away” the very conditions that led to the crisis. In addition, as blogger and CNBC commentator Barry Ritholtz has noted, many of the actions that precipitated the crisis were hidden even to the most careful observers; what was in essence a “run” on the world’s largest financial institutions didn’t occur in the physical world—it happened as people pulled the virtual plug on their investments in the privacy of their own homes.

We intelligence professionals can be horribly guilty of this same error, treating the information that arrives in our inboxes as the population (to borrow a term from the pollsters), when in fact the information (secret or open source) can only ever be a sample. This is, of course, as the American, British, Australian, and other commissions and reports pointed out, one of the major plot lines in the Iraq WMD misstep. As Ritholtz also pointed out, the tendency of economists to uncritically accept data from certain limited sources led to only a passing familiarity with reality. The same can be said at times of intelligence professionals.

Lesson 3: Traditional economic analysis has trouble dealing with human irrationality.

We all tend to underestimate the importance of emotions when we attempt to understand the actions of world leaders or the sentiments of a population.

Our third learning from economics is that economists have a difficult time confronting the problem of irrationality. Perhaps the best example of this is Alan Greenspan’s testimony before Congress that it never occurred to him that bankers and other capitalists would make decisions counter to their own best and long-term interests (what he actually said was, “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity [myself especially] are in a state of shocked disbelief.”); after all, classical economics is built on principles such as the invisible hand and the rational decision maker.

For intelligence professionals, the lesson here is straightforward: we, too, have an irrational attachment to rationality. We all tend to underestimate the importance of emotions when we attempt to understand the actions of world leaders or the sentiments of a population.

Lesson 4: Timing is very different from analysis.

Barry Ritholtz made this insightful observation in his blog; we would do well to apply it to intelligence. Understanding timing is different from analysis and requires an additional, probably still-to-be-defined set of skills; it is impossible to improve our ability to provide specific warning of threats or opportunities just by “doing analysis better.” Advances here will require that we explore much broader sources of information. Advances in this area will also require as yet undiscovered (or, if already available, underutilized) cutting-edge intellectual and cognitive techniques and tools.

The importance of timing becomes evident in economists’ struggles to identify the precipitating events in the countdown to crisis. Two camps seem to form in the debate: those who attribute the crisis to failings by individuals (e.g., bankers who irrationally failed to protect their own interests, whiz kids who created flawed algorithms) and those who recognize much more dynamic and amorphous forces at work (e.g., the emergence of new financial instruments which were deployed before anyone fully understood all their possible consequences; the use of new technologies that would affect the volume and velocity of trades in unprecedented ways, the growing interdependencies among financial centers, which increased the potential for and ease of contagion, and so forth). As a segue to lesson 5, it does appear that those who argue for more regulation in response to the crisis land in the first camp—explicitly or implicitly, they believe that regulating the actions of individuals can impose order on chaos—that is, they assume that the “individual actor” model will carry the day.

Lesson 5: How we think about causality in the world has great bearing on the priorities we set as an intelligence service and as a nation.

What caused the economic crisis? Was it the result of trends and dynamics that no individual, brokerage house, central bank could see coming, much less control—an “act of God”? Or was it caused primarily by the actions of a few, like the whiz kids who devised the clever algorithms that left out as “unlikely” the disastrous chain of events that actually happened? Perhaps it was the brokerage house that figured out how to bundle mortgages into some kind of new investment instrument. Maybe it was someone else entirely—the product of a “Great Man”? That the policy response to the economic crisis has thus far been to regulate and reregulate implies the “Great Man” theory wins out—as it often appears to dominate intelligence analysis and collection.

The wiser course is to consider all possible causalities; we may not be able to say exactly how or why, but few can deny that the world we now inhabit is vastly different from the one in which great men and the discovery of their secrets was the stock-in-trade of intelligence work. This points to an even larger question: the great debate between the value of secrets (and secrecy, writ large) and open-source information. As we consider the way we as a profession have regarded either and both of these, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that far too little attention has been paid to the importance of open sources.

In fact, it may already be too late for us—in automatically assuming that secrets are more valuable than anything entire populations could possibly tell us, we may have missed valuable opportunities to integrate not only our thinking about but our ability to integrate open sources into work processes, technologies, and products. In many respects it seems the open-source world has passed us by.

Lesson 6: The complexity of the modern world is overwhelming our existing intellectual and informational models.

The modern economy with its complex financial instruments—derivatives, credit default swaps, and other exotic investments—became too unwieldy, too complex for anyone, even the “experts,” to understand. No amount of number crunching by economists using current analytical and information techniques would have allowed them to anticipate fully what was happening. They did not fail to execute; they failed to understand.

We too are in danger of failing to understand. Our rule-based and single-method approaches are adequate for tackling orderly problems but fall short in terms of helping us to master the chaotic ones—yet if we continue to ignore that chaotic problems do exist and profoundly affect our world, it will be at our peril. Increasingly, we see that individual (“Great Man”) beliefs and the beliefs of small groups (“experts”) comprise a very small part of what we mean when we use the term “intelligence.”

What seems warranted now is active movement away from intelligence analysis as rule-based, universally and eternally true. Physicist Mark Buchanan wrote:

The peculiar and exceptionally unstable organization of the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world. Researchers in the past few years have found its mathematical fingerprints in the workings of all the upheavals mentioned so far (earthquakes, eco-disasters, market crashes), as well as in the spreading of epidemics, the flaring of traffic jams, the patterns by which instructions trickle down from managers to workers in the office, and in many other things.

What seems warranted now is active movement away from intelligence analysis as rule-based, universally and eternally true.

This requires acknowledging that systems often viewed in the past as stable entities that need significant shocks to disintegrate are just as often veined with many minute and therefore largely unseen fault lines that can be activated by very small disturbances. The fact that these small disturbances (physicists call them “critical states”) exist and can powerfully impact world events has innumerable implications for intelligence work, but at the very least it requires that we have the patience to let intelligence officers pursue very small leads and gather data on seemingly unimportant, tiny fault lines.

Many individuals, thinking about how to adjust our intellectual approaches to this much more complex environment, are beginning to introduce a new term to describe the cognitive adjustment we need to make—sense-making. It would require another extensive article to do this topic justice, but at its core is a realization that sense-making can never be contained in a finished product created by a lone expert; sense-making can only occur at the confluence of many different points of view.

Complexity is clearly the key theme that runs through the economists’ post-mortems…. Let us take heed.

There is no easy, obvious response to difficult intelligence questions because the complexity of the modern world has outpaced the capabilities of our current intellectual and informational models. These do not always accurately approximate reality, they make little accounting for human irrationality, and they fail to help us distinguish between timing and analysis. Taken together, these shortcomings force us to reconsider how we think about causality. In terms of the global financial crisis, complexity is clearly the key theme that runs through the economists’ post-mortems and it serves as an important analogue for the intelligence profession. Let us take heed.

Decisions are clear…because the world is:

Decisions are fluid…because the world is:

• evident
• Obscure
• rational
• Irrational
• predictable
• not predictable
• human actuated
• outside the control of men
• straightforward enough to understand
• too complex for rules
• In this world we need intelligence
• In this world we need sense-making

Terrorism in India: We need to think! We need to think fast

With the advent(Young and Resurgent India) of globalization and information revolution India has evolved into greater international fluidity and uncertainty. The coexistence of religious orthodoxy, ethnic or local affiliation, insurgency in northeast, Maoism and varied rural development and agricultural reforms has raised troubling questions about peace and stability. The threat posed by extremist organization is complex, which draws upon fragments of like-minded individuals and sympathetic groups.

The technological revolution has also given impetus to terrorist for creation and facilitation of new forms of terrorism .Terrorism/Extremism, is not the byproduct of social misery and frustration but an act of gaining political ambition and designs of state and the groups, which promotes it. The birth of terrorism is uniquely omnipresent in the middle east but the major growth has always been in the southeast Asian countries like the one in India, The Kandahar hijack of Indian Airlines 1999  and September 9/11 2001  depicts a unique relationship of events i.e. Sign of  Aircraft flying capability of terrorist.

India have become the playing ground for many extremist / terrorist who test market it’s strategies in India for the final use in the western hemisphere.  Why India should be a Test market for these terrorist? To eradicate the problem we need to analyses the political system because it constitutes the roots of our existence; Democracy.

To have an effective counter terror policy we need to justify the role of political conflict in terms of separatist movement, ethnic conflict, communal conflict, and phenomena of stateless area caused by divergent rural development and agricultural reforms, which provides impetus to separatist groups, extremist or terrorist for conducting terrorist activity in India.

India from inception has cultural, linguistic, and religious affinities that are across state and national boundaries. It is clear case of political intention of divergent thinking resulting in inconsistent state building in India, and creating ethnic identity conflicts that gives impetus to militant/terrorism and separatism in Indian states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Tripura, and Assam. It clearly depicts a linkage among the political sentiments of regional political independence and greater demographic and cultural autonomy.  A recent case of clashes in Jammu and Kashmir shows a clear case of effect of insurgency.It is reflection of active and deep-rooted separatist movements based upon inter ethnic and inter communal violence and political violence.

Assamese-speaking separatist terrorists, specifically the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), contour terrorism in Assam and currently seek the creation of independent state. The origin to the movement was a violent political turmoil caused by mass influx of Bengali-speaking migrants into the region in the 1980s.

What should be the solution?EARLY WARNING ON INSURGENCY – WHAT INDIAN GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND TO MITIGATE RISKS

Since the birth of our Nation, religious diversity is one the facets used by terrorist or extremist to meet goals. Communal violence in India is rooted via Hindu and Muslim tensions. Mumbai and Delhi has been a victim of extremely deadly terrorist attacks launched by militant Islamist groups that are motivated by a host of issues:

1. The Kashmir crisis;
2. Ram Mandir ;
3. Gujarat Riot;
4. Perceptions among Indian Muslims that state and local politicians have exploited the religious divisions for political gain and
5. Finally  , Deviant behavior of law enforcement showing  unwillingness  to protect targeted Muslims.

A Common thread across incident is the misuses of political system.

With lack of governance, rural development and centric political abuse has created independent shells for the terrorist/ extremist to recruit, train and run operations from far-flung areas of Bihar up to Andhra Pradesh.

We need to re-think our political System?

Insight on dynastic politics in India

With due respect to the ability of these scions from various political dynasties in India, these may be very intelligent and hardworking children of political dynasties of India but in the regions which they represent it will not be wrong to say that they have also usurped the right of ordinary Indians to secure nominations from mainstream political parties to contest elections.

To understand Indian politics, one needs to understand that the Indian vote bank votes on caste ideologies. These scions of ruling family or others have vote banks which holds their families in favorable perception.

Indian democracy is about understanding the Indian caste system as voters cast their votes based on their religious ideology or caste ideologies.

India is suffering from terrorism/extremist since childhood . With changing environment the government needs to realign their strategy to fight against both Internal and External threats. The political class needs to understand at some point in time that religious ideologies will not be their honey pot forever. With spatial distribution of terrorism clubbed with political crisis may bleed our nation to death.

We need to think! We need to think fast.

Methods to counter radical elements in the new age.   Jai Hind

hacker – the Ingenious

The Hacker – the Ingenious

Right from the time when the 6^th sense evolved in many forms, one of the most important of their form is the computer. This started from just a computing machine then and now to a Connecting net-machine.

Since its inception, techie kids ( I really don’t mean adult, here) have started to grow along with this machine that builds them a wonderful world around them making them deviant techies. And there lies the problem, being DEVIANT. They are nowadays called as HACKERS, which originally means:

-          a person, as an artist or writer, who exploits, for money, his or her creative ability or training in the production of dull, unimaginative, and trite work; one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the art

Don’t be mistaken here. Because the word has evolved in recent times to a harsher form which is:

-            One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.

And the field has classified into three main categories in relation with HATS

1 . Whitehat

2. Greyhat

3. Blackhat

Whitehats are supposed to be the good guys and their official designation in the IT-prone companies are system administrators.

Greyhats are the typical no-good, no- bad guys, which means they do things for entertainment or fun

Blackhats are the serious type of people who try to exploit the balance of the web.

Recently, Twitter has come under lot of hack starting from DDOS (Denial of DOS attacks) and the latest one was the hack into one of their administrators accounts

Its follows like this:

“Twitter has admitted the security lapses in the login to the Twitter website. In the last   few months hackers have gained the access of the admin accounts of the users by entering into the admin panel of the Twitter users.

Hackers by accessing the twitter accounts of the users were able to change the personal info, password change, able to see the protected tweets etc. Twitter is settling the charges with the FTC / Federal Trade commission of deceiving its users due to the various securities loopholes in the Twitter website.

Twitter website official said that they have removed many security concerns of the Twitter login and trying to sort out all the possible loopholes as soon as possible.”

If you think, this is just a twitter account and get on to your next work, you are wrong then. Sit back and think, what if this is your bank account or your online credit card portal account which could have been hacked?

Its time to re-think defenses when there are lot of loopholes in the cyber world. A hacker steals your password in many, many, different & unimaginable ways.

One such thing is the Rootkits, the recent advanced versions of virus, which goes into your system undetected and gains administrator privileges.

Rootkits can be defined as:

A rootkit is a software or hardware device designed to gain administrator-level control over a computer system without being detected.

It can enter into your system in any form. It could be an attachment in your e-mail or a spammed content or through your own USB pen drive if its shared with another computer. What I am suggesting is not to stop using computer, but start using them smartly. Think what might a hacker get from your machine. And what is that you want to hide from others? As systems grow, it gets complex and disastrous.

Rootkits are called by various names such as trojans, viruses, malwares depending upon their escalation of risk.

The hackers use superior undetectable scripts in c, c++ and java to execute their goals flawlessly and by the time your antivirus shows that there has been a compromise in your system, the damage had already been done.

That’s why, for the common cyberizen (cyber citizen), I recommend not to open attachments from the mail if that is from an unknown sender and even if u have opened, make sure you go to the TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES folder to delete all the files. And do establish a sound FIREWALL. Also whenever you download files make sure that the source has been verified.

I know IE8 is the slowest browser in parsing a webpage and it fails the acid test with just  28/100 in comparison with other available better performing browsers. But it has to be known that the INPRIVATE BROWSING mode in IE8 is the most secure mode in todays’s browser.

Your life get complicated with your foray into the world of social networking. Try to be as formal you can be in the cyber-social sphere, because WHAT YOU ARE IN CYBER-AVATAR, IS DEFINITELY NOT YOU IN REAL

Pakistan – India: LeT Spreading Menace

The Pakistani American Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative David Coleman Headley reportedly disclosed to his National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogators that the LeT continued to actively execute surveys of major targets in India. These surveys were principally carried out by visiting agents and not by activating sleeper cells. According to Headley, at least 100 targets in India had been identified, listed, surveyed and photographed by different LeT agents. Headley, who was one of such agents, said he was not aware of the identities and nationalities of the others, as his Pakistani ‘handlers’ were careful not to reveal details. He further indicated that he had videographed and photographed some 30 targets in several Indian cities. These included the targets of the November 26, 2008, (also known as 26/11) terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Maharashtra), for which he had conducted detailed surveys during his nine visits to India between 2006 and 2008.

The NIA team had interrogated Headley over seven days [June 3-10] in what the US described as unrestricted “direct access”, as part of the cooperation and partnership between the US and India in the fight against international terrorism. Headley, who had changed his given name of Daood Gilani in 2006 to scout targets in Mumbai, had pleaded guilty on March 18, 2010, in a Chicago Court, to 12 Federal terrorism charges. He admitted that he participated in planning the 26/11 terrorist attacks, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper.

Headley’s disclosures corroborate the constant warnings by both the Indian as well as foreign intelligence agencies of impending LeT attacks in India. Intelligence reports in the recent past have indicated that the LeT was planning to abduct key political leaders, target helicopters carrying VIPs, strike public functions with explosives-laden trucks, hire or hijack aircraft or helicopters to carry out 9/11-type attacks, target scientists working in sensitive areas such as defence and space, among several other plots. The LeT’s high profile targets include the National Defence Academy in Khadagwasla (Maharashtra), the National Defence College, Delhi, defence establishments in Pune (Maharashtra), and multinational corporation Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s HITEC City offices in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh). On June 28, 2010, Indian intelligence officials have intercepted phone conversations between LeT ‘commanders’, which established that the group was planning fresh attacks at landmarks in different cities, including Srinagar, Jammu, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The conversations also discussed a strike against top politicians. Further, on June 30, intelligence agencies warned that Indian missions in Bangladesh and Nepal were under threat of a possible joint attack by the LeT and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). Earlier, on April 7, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College warned that India’s transportation, economic infrastructure and political establishment were on the LeT’s radar.

These threats have already materialized in the first major Islamist terrorist attack, outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), after the 26/11 carnage, in the German Bakery bomb blast in Pune’s Koregaon Park, near the Osho Ashram, on February 13, 2010, in which nine persons, including four foreigners, were killed and over 40 were injured. The attack came just days after an open threat by the LeT. Addressing a rally in Islamabad (Pakistan) on February 5, Abdur Rehman Makki, ‘deputy’ to Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, declared that, while the jihadis were earlier interested only in the liberation of Kashmir, the water issue had now ensured that “Delhi, Pune and Kanpur” were all fair targets.

Top LeT leaders Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Yousuf Muzammil, Ahmad Bhai and Zarar Shah are currently in custody on charges of involvement in the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, and have been replaced by new ‘commanders’ to step up terrorist operations in J&K and other parts of India. According to intelligence sources, these new ‘commanders’ include Raza Ahmed aka Shahji aka Abu Anas of Bahawalpur in the Punjab province of Pakistan, who had earlier operated as the ‘divisional commander’ for North Kashmir for almost a decade, before he was called back to Pakistan; Hyder Bhai aka Bilal aka Salahuddin, known for several fidayeen (suicide squad) attacks in J&K; Abdul Gaffar aka Huzefa aka Khalid, who was earlier active in Gandarbal in Central Kashmir; and Walid, who had been active in Lolab in North Kashmir. According to sources, the initial focus of the four new ‘commanders’, all of whom are Pakistani nationals, was the Kashmir Valley and the Doda-Rajouri-Poonch belt in Jammu, besides metropolitan and other major cities of India.

The LeT’s current objectives, described in a poster at a March 23, 2010, rally, in slogans superimposed over an image of the burning Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, are to “free Kashmir, Pakistan’s lifeline, from the enemy”; work for the “freedom of the Muslims of Gujarat, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and the rest of India” ; and to “save Pakistan’s parched rivers.” Maps posted on the JuD’s Facebook page provide a graphic illustration of its ambitions. One map of India is emblazoned with Pakistan’s crescent moon and star symbol and JuD flag flying on the Red Fort in New Delhi. In another, much of northern, north-eastern and central India are referred to as Pakistan. Nepal, Bangladesh and south India are marked “disputed territories.” The page also carries a facsimile of a Hadith — sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad — which purports to provide scriptural legitimacy to the JuD’s jihad. “A King of the House of the Pious,” it prophesies, “will send a Lashkar [army] towards India. The mujahideen (holy warriors) will plunder the land of India, take over its treasures, and the King will use these treasures to honour the House of the Pious… The mujahideen of this Lashkar will conquer all territory between the east and west and will establish the Kingdom of the Pious.”

The Facebook page also confirms LeT’s close links with al-Qaeda, and contains several images of al-Qaeda chief Osama-bin-Laden. There is a low-resolution image of an individual, apparently Saeed, seated next to bin Laden. Such linkages are confirmed by US Defence Department report that states that the LeT has a “close relationship” with al Qaeda. Indian intelligence sources also indicate that a tie-up between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and LeT, for attacks aimed at India, has been established. India’s Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, disclosed, further, that LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JuM) and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) were earlier operating separately, but had now come together. The LeT has also linked up with the Indian Mujahedeen [IM], which is regarded as a potential resource base that the LeT hopes to use for identification and reconnaissance of targets and arranging logistics for terror attacks.

Despite purported ‘restrictions’ placed on it in Pakistan, the LeT remains flush with funds, collecting generous donations from the overseas Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf and the United Kingdom, Islamic non-Governmental organisations, Pakistani/Kashmiri business people and through its parent organisation JuD. The terrorist group also counts on donations from sympathetic Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Islamist-leaning Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) officers. The US Defence Department report indicated, further, that, “In addition, LeT maintains relations with extremist and/ or terrorist groups across the globe ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya by means of the JuD network.”

While much of state support to the LeT is covert, it is significant that the Government of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, gave about USD one million to institutions linked with the JuD, in 2009. “At least 80 million rupees [$940,000] have been allocated for the institutions [linked to Jamaat-ud-Dawa] during the current fiscal year,” Rana Sanaullah, a senior Punjab Minister told the BBC. However, he maintained that the institutions – which include two schools and a hospital – were no longer attached to JuD. When asked why the Punjab Government had allotted money in the budget for institutions it managed, a spokesman for JuD, Hafiz Abdur Rehman, responded: “The truth is that we are ourselves astonished at this.”

Meanwhile, despite it losing a total of 142 of its cadres, including top ‘commanders’, who have been killed by the Security Forces since 26/11, the LeT appears to have more of a say in the Kashmir Valley, including in the wave of what is being described as “agitational terrorism”. India has blamed separatist elements linked to the LeT for stoking unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram thus remarked, on June 30, “Anti-national elements are clearly linked to the LeT. We know that the Lashkar has been active in Sopore.” Since the latter half of June 2010, major parts of Kashmir have repeatedly erupted in violent demonstrations, and a total of 11 ‘protesters’ have already died in Police firing.

The Lashkar has created a significant base in South India as well. Reports indicate that LeT has two support groups in Kerala, and four Malayali (Keralite) LeT militants were killed in J&K on October 6, 2008. On Jun 21, 2010, Kerala Police sources claimed that many boys from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, between the ages of 16 and 25, were being trained in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) under the supervision of LeT ‘commanders’.

The LeT is also using its operatives in Bangladesh and Nepal to try set up a ‘buffer zone’ in interior areas of Bihar to carry out terror attacks both within the State and elsewhere in the country, top intelligence sources said. Mohammad Omar Madni, a close aide of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and the LeT’s point man in Nepal told interrogators he had already recruited men in Katihar, Madhubani, Siwan, Bhagalpur, Gopalganj, Motihari, Betia and Muzzaffarpur Districts of Bihar for LeT’s hawala operations, fake currency syndicates and drug-running. Madni, was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi Police near Qutb Minar in South Delhi on June 4, 2009. He reportedly disclosed that he had infiltrated into India on a ‘talent hunt’. Madni was one among at least 18 LeT cadres arrested in India, outside J&K, since 26/11 (another 63 were arrested in J&K), blunting the outfits operations in the country. One such arrest included the ‘south India commander’ of the LeT, identified as Shaik Abdul Khaja alias Amjad from Afzalgunj area of Hyderabad, on January 18, 2010. 24 ISI agents, with close ties to the LeT, have also been arrested in India since 26/11.

While the IM suffered a major reverse with the arrest of its senior cadres and elimination of others, including Atif Amin who was killed in the Batla House shootout on September 19, 2008, agencies feel that major leaders still at large – estimated to be over 20 – remain a threat and are crucial to the execution of the ‘Karachi Project’. The ‘Karachi Project’ is a ‘joint venture’ of the ISI and LeT, and involves serving and retired officers of the Pakistan Army and fugitive terrorists from India. The ‘project’, first revealed by Headley to his FBI interrogators, was designed to use Indians for setting off terror attacks in India. Headley indicated that five or six serving Pakistani officers were involved in the ‘Karachi Project’.  Meanwhile, on June 5, 2010, the Union Government declared the IM a terrorist outfit.

The LeT has now attacked Indian targets in Afghanistan as well. Though LeT’s global presence is now widely acknowledged, the ISI had not previously used the group to target Indian establishments beyond Indian soil. The LeT’s expansion into Afghanistan is believed to be directed against both international and Indian targets. A senior NATO intelligence official was quoted by The Times as saying , “The LeT is now active in six to eight provinces in Afghanistan, a big leap from hardly any presence five years ago.” Shaida Abdali, Afghanistan’s deputy national security adviser referred to this more obliquely, stating, “Our concern is that there are still players involved that are trying to use Afghanistan’s ground as a place for a proxy war. It is being carried out by certain state actors to fight their opponents.” Several satellite phone conversations intercepted by Indian agencies in the past few months indicate that LeT is now deeply entrenched in Pakistani efforts to force India out of Afghanistan. The location of the satellite phone in most of these conversations was established in areas adjoining the Kunar province along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Kunar is where LeT was first formed in the early 1990s. One such conversation, intercepted in the first week of February 2010 by the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), had terrorists talking about the need to hurt India in Kabul. Meanwhile, LeT’s expansion in Afghanistan has prompted suspicions in Washington that it is part of Pakistan’s game plan to have proxy forces at hand when US troops begin their withdrawal in July 2011.

Significantly, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) on April 27, 2010, that the LeT was also making concerted efforts to develop links in the Maldives and other neighbouring countries. Similarly, Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of the US Pacific Command in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 27, 2010, stated that the LeT, predominately a threat to India, was fast expanding operations to other South Asian countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. On similar lines, US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, P. J. Crowley, asserted on April 23, 2010, “It (LeT) is a threat to our citizens. It’s a threat to Indian citizens. Next door, it’s a threat to Pakistani citizens. And next door, it’s a threat to Afghan citizens.” A March 15, 2010, report had claimed that the LeT had identified as many as 320 targets across the globe, just 20 of which were in India. At a Congressional hearing, US Congressman Gary Ackerman testified: “In the wake of the (26/11) Mumbai attack, investigators uncovered in controller records and e-mail accounts a list of 320 locations worldwide deemed by the LeT as possible targets for attack. Only 20 of the targets were located within India.”

It is significant that the LeT has been banned in the UK since March 1, 2001. The US Department of State named the LeT as a foreign terrorist organisation on December 26, 2001. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) listed it as a terrorist organisation on May 2, 2005. The US Department of Treasury named four of its leaders — Amir Hafiz Mohammed Saeed; Operations Commander Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi; Chief of Finance Haji Mohammad Ashraf; and fund collector Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq — under Executive Order 13224 which targets terrorists and those providing financial, technological or material support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Finally, in the aftermath of 26/11, the UNSC proscribed the JuD on December 10, 2008, listing it as an alias of the LeT, and designated Saeed, Lakhvi, Ashraf and Bahaziq as foreign terrorists.

None of these measures has had any impact on the Pakistani Government’s attitude towards LeT. Despite volumes of evidence provided by India, progressive verification from a multiplicity of international sources, and Pakistan’s own admission of LeT’s involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Islamabad continues to support and protect its terrorist proxy, giving it full freedom of movement across Pakistan. On February 4, 2010, the JuD and the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM), held a Yakjaiti-e-Kashmir (Kashmir Solidarity) conference in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) capital Muzaffarabad, led by Syed Salahuddin, the chief of HM and chairman of the 16-party United Jihad Council (UJC). Another JuD rally, led by Hafiz Saeed, was organised at Lahore on February 5, 2010. Each of these was a well attended mass rally, widely covered by the national and international media. State agencies made no effort to curtail the activities of these groups, despite the fact that several members of the UJC are designated international terrorist organisations.

Unsurprisingly, an April 16, 2010, UN report confirmed that the ISI continued to have close links with LeT and had used the terror group’s services to foment anti-India passion in Kashmir and elsewhere. “The Pakistani military organised and supported the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan in 1996. Similar tactics were used in Kashmir against India after 1989,” the report noted.

It is evident that LeT remains Pakistan’s principal instrumentality in India. More significantly, its imprint is being steadily and systematically extended to wider theatres across the South Asian neighbourhood, to serve Pakistan’s augmenting ambitions in anticipation of a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. US dependence on Pakistani ‘cooperation’ in the ‘war on terror’ has conferred near-complete impunity on Pakistani mischief in this region, and it is within the ambit of this latitude that Islamist extremist terrorism continues to thrive in Pakistan, to be exported into the neighbourhood and beyond.

Ajit Kumar Singh is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Conflict Management, which publishes the South Asia Intelligence Review (SATP)

Secretary Clinton Delivers U.S. Independence Day Message

Secretary Clinton Delivers U.S. Independence Day Message

Posted by DipNote Bloggers / July 04, 2010

In a video message, Secretary Clinton delivered remarks celebrating America’s Independence Day. The Secretary said:

“Every year, Americans gather with friends and family on the Fourth of July to celebrate the values that inspired the founders of our nation more than two centuries ago, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now these freedoms are not unique to Americans. They are embodied in constitutions of many nations, and observed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we all recognize.”

She continued, “[L]et’s use this celebration as a chance to form new connections, exchange ideas, and find fresh solutions to our shared challenges. And reaffirm our commitment to advancing universal human rights.”

Find out how American diplomats commemorate U.S. Independence Day in Afghanistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Guatemala, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Tanzania, and Zambia.

http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/clinton_independence_day