got geoint?

Imagine if any Pakistani could send an anonymous text message to the authorities suggesting the location of Osama Bin Laden. Each location could be plotted on a map. The dots would be scattered widely, perhaps, with promising leads indistinguishable from rubbish. But on a given day, a surge of dots might point to the same village, in what could not be coincidence. Troops could be ordered in. This kind of everyone-as-informant mapping is shaking up the world, bringing the Wikipedia revolution to the work of humanitarians and soldiers who parachute into places with little good information. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Perhaps we are headed to a future where the best sources of Intel will be actual citizens? We highly recommend you check out this NY Times article about Ushahidi, which is shaking up the GEOINT world with its unique Intel sharing application. And, our faithful got geoint? readers may remember the podcast we did last October with Patrick Meier, Co-Founder, The International Network of Crisis Mappers (INCM). Meier also directs Ushahidi’s crisis-mapping operation.

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The White House threatened to veto the Intelligence Authorization bill because its demands for transparency and oversight would, in some cases, put American lives at risk, in the view of the Obama administration. President Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag (pictured), sent letters to the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Monday stating the that the House and Senate Intelligence Authorization bills “and their classified annexes still contain several provisions of serious concern to the Intelligence Community (IC). Three categories of provisions are so serious that the President’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill if they are included in the version presented for his signature: the Congressional notification provisions, GAO provisions, and provisions regarding the amounts authorized for the National Intelligence Program.” What do you all think? There is a fine line between transparency and risking the lives of those who work in the IC. Check out the Washington Posts’s coverage here.

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Following is an exclusive podcast with Brady Forest, Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference, which is taking place March 31 through April 1 in San Jose, CA. For those of you not familiar with Where 2.0 it is the premier event for grassroots and leading edge developers building location-aware technology to gather with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. Don’t miss out on this event!

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We hope everyone had a restful weekend. For many on the east coast, it was a very wet weekend. However, on a positive note, daylight savings happened on Sunday morning. So, time to “Spring forward” and lose an hour – which is fine by us! For this week’s MMNKO post we offer a myriad of industry new stories including updates on GeoEye, DigitalGlobe, Lockheed, Garmin, Intermap, and much more. As we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on!

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