got geoint?

Welcome once again to the Monday Morning Kick Off post. We hope everyone had a restful weekend. As always, we have compiled all the actionable news you need to kick start your work week. Of course, the news cycle these days is being dominated by news regarding U.S. drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban claimed they shot one down, the U.S. has increased it overall strikes in response to the CIA deaths, and the U.K. plans on using drones to spy on citizens. Oh, and of course, we included some more industry related news from the OGC and Envitia. Happy Monday!

C.I.A. Deaths Prompt Surge in U.S. Drone Strikes
Since the suicide bombing that took the lives of seven Americans in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, the Central Intelligence Agency has struck back against militants in Pakistan with the most intensive series of missile strikes from drone aircraft since the covert program began. Beginning the day after the attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, the agency has carried out 11 strikes that have killed about 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani news reports, which make almost no mention of civilian casualties. The assault has included strikes on a mud fortress in North Waziristan on Jan. 6 that killed 17 people and a volley of missiles on a compound in South Waziristan last Sunday that killed at least 20. Read the full NY Times article here.

In U.K.: Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance. The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police. Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. Read the full Guardian U.K. article here.

Taliban Claim Shooting Down U.S. Drone
The Taliban in North Waziristan on Sunday claimed to have shot down a US drone in Hamzoni village near Miramshah and got hold of its wreckage. Government and military officials in Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, confirmed that a drone had crashed somewhere on the Pakistani side of the border but they did not know about the cause of the incident. They, however, said seven US drones were flying over the town on Sunday.In some of the areas, officials said, the drones were seen flying at a low altitude due to cloudy weather. Read the full International News article here.

Is The Intel Chief Being Zorned?
Making the rounds among the ranks of the “formers” — that is, former senior intelligence officials who are now free to discuss the politics of the intelligence community, is a new verb. To Zorn, as in to render ineffective but to retain a subordinate. The context, for those who don’t live in Washington, was the decision by the poohbahs at the Washington Redskins to temporarily retain head coach Jim Zorn but give play-calling abilities to someone else, effectively neutering his authority and credibility. Read the full article from The Atlantic here.

U.S. Watchlists Now More Aggressive
The directors of national intelligence and the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), along with the secretary of homeland security, took responsibility at a Senate hearing Wednesday for the gaps that allowed the Christmas Day bombing attempt on Northwest Flight 253 to go forward. US authorities failed to place Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a no-fly list or a screening list to prevent him from boarding a US-bound flight, although ample information was available on him to do so, the officials conceded. NCTC Director Michael Leiter explained to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Abdulmutallab’s ability to board the plane in Amsterdam resulted from a failure to integrate intelligence information. Read the full HS Today article here.

Envitia helps find Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan
Envitia has been awarded a contract from the UK MOD looking at Information Management in support of Improvised Explosive Device incidences in theatre. Information stored in a number of separate systems will be brought together into a harmonised data model and delivered to existing systems in Afghanistan, using OGC compliant Web Services. This is building on work Envitia has undertaken for the MOD for the GI2RA (Geospatial Intelligence Integrated Reference Architecture) project. Envitia already provides expertise on geospatial architectures and solutions for a range of significant defence users with research, consultancy and deployed applications. Working with partners we offer comprehensive geospatial intelligence services to operational forces. Read the full press release here.

OGC Adopts Earth Observation Profile for Web-based Catalogue Services
The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces adoption and availability of the OGC Earth Observation (EO) Application Profile for the OGC Catalogue Services – Web (CSW) Specification 2.0.2. The EO-CSW standard will benefit a wide range of stakeholders involved in the provision and use of data generated by satellite-borne and aerial radar, optical and atmospheric sensors. The EO-CSW standard describes a set of interfaces, bindings and encodings that can be implemented in catalog servers that data providers will use to publish collections of descriptive information (metadata) about Earth Observation data and services. Developers can also implement this standard as part of Web clients that enable data users and their applications to very efficiently search and exploit these collections of Earth Observation data and services. Read the full press release here.

Happy Monday

Tags: CIA, DIA, Drones in the U.K., Envitia, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, got geoint?, Intelligence Community, NGA, Open Geospatial Consortium, Taliban strikes, US drone strikes, USGIF