[Infowarrior] - Counter-Terrorism Profiteers, With Your Money

[Richard Forno]

(Disclaimer: I know the founder of IntelCenter and while I wish the firm
well, I have to agree with Arkin's concluding paragraph, not just for that
firm but any such intelligence-analysis firm........rf)

Counter-Terrorism Profiteers, With Your Money
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/04/counterterroris.html

A National Counter-terrorism Center and a Director of National Intelligence
with ever greater authority. An FBI Terrorist Screening Center that can
reach far and wide to local law enforcement. The Defense Intelligence
Agency¹s Joint Task Force for Counter-Terrorism and a Counterintelligence
Field Activity at the Defense Department. And of course a Department of
Homeland Security and its military counter-part the U.S. Northern Command
(NORTHCOM).

Broken stovepipes of information, a PATRIOT act, actionable intelligence out
the whazoo. 

Post 9/11, the government argues - it doesn¹t even have to argue, it is just
assumed ­ that the intelligence and law enforcement nexus has never been
closer, that warnings are so seamless and complete if anything most people
worry that the government has too much information, not too little.

No potential terrorist is going to sneak through this new system, no
government agency is ever going to go wanting for more information.

So it just burns me up this week to see a prominent military command
preparing to pay a private company to provide it with terrorist warnings.

This week U.S. Air Force Space Command, a major command headquartered in
Colorado Springs, CO, issued a solicitation called "Terrorism Threat
Research" (thanks MS)  saying that it was planning to license a "terrorism
research database" to receive "real-time" warnings via pager, cell phone,
and PDA. 

The database is produced by IntelCenter, one of a cottage industry that has
sprung up since the early 1990¹s to feed at the counter-terrorism trough.
According to the group¹s website, the IntelCenter¹s ³primary client base is
comprised of military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US
and other allied countries around the world."

Space Command wants to obtain 20 licenses to the IntelCenter¹s U.S.
Government Terrorism Threat Intelligence Package ($1650.00 per license
according to the IntelCenter website).

This database, according to Space Command, includes "weekly and or real time
email notifications of all significant terrorist, rebel group and other
related activity, including bombings, assassinations, kidnappings,
significant dates, threats and organizational changes within groups."

IntelCenter will also provide warnings relating to "developments concerning
intelligence agencies around the world including operational issues,
organizational developments, new initiatives, espionage trials, new
technologies and other related issues."

And finally, IntelCenter will receive "real-time dissemination of raw
statements, fatwas, announcements, and other messages directly from
terrorist, rebel, extremist, and other organizations themselves."

The immediate question is: isn¹t this what all of these new ³long war²
commands and reorganized and beefed-up intelligence agencies with all of
their new databases and data mining and authorities supposed to do?

Okay, by government standards, $32,000 annually is petty cash. But there
must be dozens of additional agencies and commands buying the IntelCenter
product and hundreds if not thousands of licenses paid for with your and my
tax dollars. 

Everyone senses that we have a contractor crisis in our national security
community, too many contractors acting like wild west prospectors in Iraq
and the Middle East, contractors doing what we used to think of as "mission
essential" jobs in headquarters and agencies.

More power -- and money -- to IntelCenter for turning al Qaeda into a
business; I'm sure their product and work are excellent.

But it makes you wonder what the tens of thousands of government employees
working in U.S. intelligence agencies actually do. It makes you wonder why
it could be that if this information is so useful to Space Command and the
government that it shouldn¹t be provided by our $40 billion intelligence
community directly.