got geoint?

Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? We hope you all have recovered from the marathon of NFL Playoff football yesterday and last night. And, not to change the subject, but it is pretty darned cold outside right now. So, before we dive into all the actionable news — and there is plenty of news in this week’s MMNKO post — you need to kick start your week, be sure to bundle up and fire up that second cup of coffee.

New Spy Satellite Blasts Off on Secret Mission
An unmanned 235-foot-tall Delta 4-Heavy rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base Thursday afternoon with a secret satellite on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. (The NRO operates satellites that provide information to the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense.) The military isn’t saying more about the satellite – known only as NROL – but the launch constituted the use of the most powerful rocket in America’s space arsenal to ever lift off from the west coast. Jeffrey Richelson, an expert on space reconnaissance with the National Security Archive, told CNN that he believed the mission was designed to generate “high-resolution imagery of military and terrorist facilities around the world.” Read the full CBS News story here.

Domestic Use of Aerial Drones by Law Enforcement Likely to Prompt Privacy Debate
The suspect’s house, just west of this city, sat on a hilltop at the end of a steep, exposed driveway. Agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety believed the man inside had a large stash of drugs and a cache of weapons, including high-caliber rifles. As dawn broke, a SWAT team waiting to execute a search warrant wanted a last-minute aerial sweep of the property, in part to check for unseen dangers. But there was a problem: The department’s aircraft section feared that if it put up a helicopter, the suspect might try to shoot it down. Read the full Washington Post article here.

Esri FedUC: Clouds, crowds and mobile GIS
Jack Dangermond is seeing his vision realized. More than 40 years after he founded Esri, GIS is moving outside of its traditional boundaries to find new niches in both the consumer and enterprise spaces. So what happened? I met with Dangermond, Esri’s president, this morning at the Esri Federal User Conference in Washington, DC to talk about where the technology has been – and what’s driving it: Web services, crowdsourced content, mobile, and cloud computing. Esri now has what can be a confusing array of options for the uninitiated. I asked Dangermond sort it all out. Check out the full ComputerWorld blog post here.

U.S. intelligence Agencies ‘Sharing Too Much’
Intelligence agencies may be ordered to limit the information they share. “When you look at information sharing, I think we have almost overdone it,” says Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), the new chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “We have gotten into an era of need-to-share versus need-to-know. Need-to-know is an important provision when you are trying to do some operation to keep us safer. But need-to-share got us in trouble with WikiLeaks and with other leaks.” Read the full WTOP story here.

The Future of Open Source Intelligence
The world is becoming increasingly transparent and intelligence agencies need to learn to operate in world with fewer and fewer secrets. LexisNexis hosted the second round table discussion in its series on open source intelligence (OSINT) at the National Press Club on December 15. The keynote address was given by Doug Naquin, the director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Open Source Center (OSC). It also featured Chet Lunner, a former Deputy Undersecretary of Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security; Thomas Sanderson, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS); Suzanne Spaulding, a Principal with Bingham Consulting Group; and Jeff Stein, SpyTalk columnist for The Washington Post. Read the full International Affairs Review post here.

January/February NGA Pathfinder Now Online
The January/February 2011 issue of the Pathfinder magazine is available online at http://www.nga.mil. This issue highlights National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director Letitia A. Long’s vision of putting “the power of GEOINT in your hands.” NGA publishes the Pathfinder magazine bimonthly to promote public awareness and understanding of the geospatial intelligence discipline. This issue includes the articles “New NGA Capability Brings Transparency to Requests for GEOINT,” “Seeing into the Future: InnoVision Studies Reveal Growing GEOINT Challenges and Opportunities,” and “Technology Environment Increases the Impact of GEOINT.” Be sure to check out the full issue here.

Tags: Aerial Drones used by U.S. law Enforcement, Esri Fed UC, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, got geoint?, Intel agencies and information sharing, NRO spy satellite launch, United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, USGIF, WikiLeaks