Project Grey Gosling: OSINT as a Public Service
Last Updated on Thursday, 16 July 2009 09:43 Written by admin Thursday, 16 July 2009 09:43
Mining Social Media to advance emergency response, law enforcement, and child safety.
As personal interactions expand from the purely physical space to the virtual space, Social Media and its underlying APIs become a real-time channel for government agencies to react to a wide assortment of challenges ranging from disturbed teenagers planning to harm themselves or others to a minute by minute report of events in a terrorist attack or natural disaster.
The many emergency services challenges that surfaced during Hurricane Katrina serve to remind us how important it is to leverage new technology in ways that alleviate suffering and serve the common good. The Mumbai terror attacks of late 2008 as well as the recent Iranian and Xinjian crackdowns on protesters by their respective governments have demonstrated the efficacy of instant messaging services like Twitter as a source of real-time intelligence, while the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas revealed how Social Media has become an important part of Asymmetric warfare.
Social Media like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed provide individuals and organizations with an unprecedented body of data that can be mined by Public Safety authorities for the common good. This is particularly true for young people at risk from cyber stalkers, bullies, and predators of all types.
Project Grey Gosling is born of the work of GreyLogic’s Project Grey Goose – an open source intelligence (OSINT) investigation into the activities of Non-State hackers in the cyber conflicts of Russia and Georgia, India and Pakistan, and Israel and Palestine.
Inspired by the recommendations of the Harvard report: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies: Final report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States (December 31, 2008), Project Grey Gosling’s objective is to share the successful OSINT methods and processes used by Grey Goose investigators with Emergency Responders and Social Service agencies to help them serve a variety of populations through their virtual interactions in Social Media.
Software giants like Microsoft and Google are breaking new ground in combining Social Media apps with public safety purposes. Microsoft offers Vine while Google is developing INSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster), which is a nonprofit organization that aims to help communities around the world use Web and communications technology such as Twitter and Facebook to identify and warn others of outbreaks like Avian flu or disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
Just this year, Facebook has offered its Open Stream API to developers who will be able to use the service to leverage applications to read and interact with the stream. Posts can then be published “on a mobile device, Web site or desktop.”
GreyLogic and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government are exploring a collaboration whereby the workshop would be hosted on the Harvard campus with Harvard faculty participating. The Project Gosling Two Day Workshop on OSINT for Social Services and Youths in Crisis will examine the challenges and opportunities posed by Social Media including:
New techniques in mining the social stream for relevant data
Implementing Privacy protections
A survey of new technology applications like INSTEDD, Vine, and others
How the Social Stream can aid Predictive Policing
GreyLogic is seeking corporate sponsorship to cover the costs of hosting this event. Corporations who participate will have their brand prominently displayed in marketing and course materials, as well as a Summary Findings and Recommendations report similar to this one http://www.lnwprogram.org/publicfiles/download/Future+of+Unmanned+and+Robotic+Warfare?file_id=505283
For more information, contact Jeffrey Carr.
Building BRIDGEs with the U.S. Intelligence Community
Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:38 Written by admin Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:38
I just published my first post ever at O’Reilly Radar on the IC’s innovative new platform for collaboration called BRIDGE.
Project Grey Goose Phase III: Open Call for Volunteers
Last Updated on Thursday, 26 March 2009 06:32 Written by admin Thursday, 26 March 2009 06:32
Project Grey Goose is an OSINT phenomenon that has garnered acclaim for its reports from within and without the Intelligence Community. As we prepare to move into Phase III of our evolution, I’m initiating an open call for volunteers for the first time in six months. Here’s what I’m looking for:
- Preferred: Foreign language skills (Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Pakistani)
- Required: Past experience as a Collector or an Analyst
- Required: Self-motivated, Patient, and Persistent
- Required: Able to work independently with little direction
- Required: You have a mind that’s wired to find patterns where others see only chaos
- Required: Able to dedicate a minimum of 5 hrs per week in collection activities
Your participation will be completely confidential unless you request otherwise. If you meet the above qualifications and would like to be considered for our elite team of experts, contact me at your earliest convenience.
Inside Cyber Warfare
