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Networked homeland security as model for piracy issue
By WDavidStephenson | April 13, 2009
Unaccustomed as I’ve become to blogging, I thought this was important enough to do a post…
Watching the coverage of the Maersk Alabama piracy incident, it seemed to me that conventional responses are ineffective because of the extreme asymmetrical aspect of the situation and because conventional treaty-based mutual defense approaches aren’t relevant on the high seas.
I think my “networked homeland security” theory may be an appropriate model for response. Here’s why:
- these situations are fluid and fast-moving, so any response has to have the same fluidity.
- real-time, location-based information is critical.
- the response needs to be collaborative — reflecting “social data analysis,” in which a large number of individuals, each of whom make have some of the relevant information, can use Web 2.0 tools such as threaded discussions, wikis, etc. to analyze the situation.The likely result of such a collaborative analysis (and one, incidentally, in which the cast of characters will likely be different in every situation depending on who happens to be in the vicinity and/or has relevant information) is likely to be a more nuanced, comprehensive and accurate one than if only one analyst or a small group was involved.
- the exact mix of data will vary in each case: in some situations there may be live, streaming video available to document the situation; in some, still photos relayed by camera phone, and who knows what other information may or may not be available depending on variables such as location, weather and/or Internet access. As long as the relevant information is relayed in an IP- and packet-based fashion, it an be shared by an ad hoc network of those who happen to be in the region at the time.
Given the pirates’ asymmetrical strengths of speed and surprise, ad hoc communications and decision making through networked homeland security may be our best countervailing power…
Technorati tags: homeland security piracy Maersk Alabama Somalia War on Terror U.S. Navy terrorism antiterrorismtechnology crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds social data analysiscrowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security current affairs government IT mobile social networks government
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