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Welcome once again to our Monday Morning News Kick Off post on got geoint? Last week, the news cycle was dominated by all of the news in Haiti. While the issues in Haiti will continue to be in the news for the weeks (and perhaps months) to come, we wanted to pull together defense-, intelligence- and GEOINT-related stories that are not about Haiti. As such, this week, we cover a number of stories including protests this past weekend at the CIA regarding drone strikes, the U.S. Intelligence system being overloaded and how Google is adding ads to the billboards on Street View. So, grab that second cup of coffee and read on!

Activists Protest Outside CIA Offices Against Drone Strikes
Anti-war activists held a protest march in the US capital on Saturday against drone strikes in Pakistan that they said had killed hundreds of innocent people. After rallying outside the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia, the protesters plan to march to former vice president Dick Cheney’s home nearby in McLean. The CIA runs the programme that includes drone strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Fata. Read the full CommonDreams.org article here.

Hoekstra Statement on CIA Casualties in Afghanistan
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, issued the following statement after a terror attack in Afghanistan claimed the lives of seven CIA officers and wounded six: “The American people may never know their names, but we owe them an enduring debt of gratitude. They served in silence so that our great nation may live in freedom. My thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those lost and injured. In this season of giving, they have given far more than most. “To the workforce at the CIA, the nature of your service means that you do not get the credit and accolades you deserve for the risks that you take. Today our nation honors and salutes you, and we join you in mourning the loss of your colleagues.” Read the full American Chronicle article here.

Suicide Attack Reveals Threat to Obama’s Afghanistan Plan
The suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan has exposed the collaboration among militant Islamist groups on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and aggravated tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan, Washington’s most important ally in its war against al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban. Officials of both countries and independent analysts said the attack in Khost, Afghanistan, 10 miles from the Pakistani border, increases the likelihood that the Pakistani military will bow to pressure from Washington and expand its anti-Taliban offensive along the border. Read the full AP article here.

Analysts Say U.S. Intelligence System Overloaded, Out Of Date
The attempted Christmas Day terror attack on a U.S. airliner has provoked much soul searching in Washington and talk of the need to reexamine U.S. intelligence-gathering operations. After ordering a snap review of what went wrong, U.S. President Barack Obama blamed the incident on a failure by the country’s intelligence agencies to share intelligence and “connect the dots,” allowing a suspected Al-Qaeda operative to board a commercial flight with the aim of blowing it up. The problem, he said, wasn’t a lack of information but, in fact, an overabundance of it. And that, paradoxically, may be one of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. intelligence community right now, according to several counterterrorism and intelligence experts. Read the full Radio Free Europe article here.

Spy Satellite Technology in a Mobile Phone Camera
OmniVision has announced a new image sensor chip that uses a technique called BSI, or Back Side Illumination that basically turns the camera chip upside down so that the light is collected through the back of the chip. In a more typical image sensor light has to pass through a series of layers on the image chip between reaching the sensor. BSI provides better performance, particularly in low-light conditions. Both NASA and the National Security Agency have been using BSI image technology in satellites for years, but this OmniVision chip is one of the first made available to consumers. Check out the full Physics Today article here.

Google To Add Ads To Street View Billboards
Google was recently granted a patent that will allow it to stick new advertisements on the billboards and other surfaces captured by its Street Views cameras. The big question is, what took it so long? The basic idea is pretty simple. As Google’s Street Views team drives all around the world, its cameras capture tons of imagery — including billboards. Large billboards are only relevant in a given location for so long. Since Google owns the images, why not overwrite those old and probably outdated billboards with advertisements of its own? Well, that’s just what it wants to do. Read the full InformationWeek article here.

Happy Monday!

Tags: CIA, CIA and Afghanistan, CIA Protest Over Drone Attacks, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, Google Street View, OmniVision, U.S. Intelligence Community, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, USGIF