Web 2 War

In "Using Web 2.0 as a Weapon" (Professional Notes, Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, February 2010), Lieutenant Randal T. Jones discusses how RSS feeds, blogs, Wikis and mash ups are being used by the military. The Lieutenant points to the US Army Knowledge Online (AKO) as an example of a secure intranet with RSS feeds and blogs. He cites the US intelligence Intellipedia as an example of a successful classified Wiki and the Army's Tactical Ground Reporting Network (TiGRNET) as a mash-up. I could not find any publicly available references to TiGRNet, but it may be similar to the Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR).

However, this use of technology is not all one sided. Later in the same journal, Norman Friedman ("Stealing Signals") reports that from 2004 insurgents in Iraq were intercepting video from US Predator UAVs and have been doing so in Afghanistan as late as 2009. What is not clear is why these signals were being transmitted unencrypted or if they were of any practical value to the insurgents. A few fleeting images from a UAV would be of little value. But Web 2.0 technology is now available to anyone with a smart phone and this could make scattered images of far higher intelligence value.

GovHack: Mashup Australian Government Data on 30 October

GovHack is a free, intensive event at in Canberra on 30 to 31 October. This is sponsored by the Government 2.0 Taskforce and supported by CSIRO. Government agencies, locals, state, federal and international, might like to come forward with APIs and datasets to be used by the participants. Offer datasets and tools via the Wiki. University and industry researchers can contact Laurent Lefort at CSIRO. The event will explore some of the ideas for the use of government information discussed at Bar Camp Canberra.

Pipes from RSS Feeds

PC Authority magazine contains a excellent article "Absolutely fabulous" (David Kidd, October 2007) on Web 2.0 and mashups. I used their instructions to create a simple RSS feed using Yahoo's Pipes service. This lets you take data from several feeds, filter and sort it and then pipe it out as a feed. It uses a "join the dots" approach, displaying each source and filter as a box, with the information flows as pipes joining the boxes. I used it to create a custom feed of Seminars at the ANU Computer Science and Information Technology Building. This can then be combined with other announcements and displayed on a screen in the foyer.