Month: October 2006

Terror Training on the Web? What is a Fusion Center?

BOSTON (Reuters) –
“They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.

What Is a Fusion Center? From the DOJ’s Fusion Center Guidlines:

A fusion center is an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by analyzing data from a variety of sources. In addition, fusion centers are a conduit for implementing portions of the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (hereafter, NCISP or Plan).

The Fusion Center Guidelines support the use of a variety of databases, drivers’ licenses, motor vehicle registrations, criminal justice and corrections sources, and “public and private sources,”. What private and public sources?

Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer for DHS, at a Sept. 7 House hearing stated that iInformation-sharing and data mining remain key activities at a growing number of state and local intelligence fusion centers and by Oct 2007 the DHS intends to deploy federal intellignece officers to 18 state fusion centers to facilitate the collaboration. Forty-two states have either set up such centers or plan to do so.

Big Brother is listing and reading – are you?

Color Selection Woe’s

As you can see I have changed over to the Binary Blue WordPress Theme. Right now I have selected no scheme – or the no visual excitement choice.

Now I need to look over the code and figure out where to go – visually that is – with the blogs color choices. Blue is my favorite color and I am thinking of mixing it up with the natural earth tones. Perhaps a wheat and green as compliments? Should I use a graphical header or plain color? So many choices and questions to mull around.

Then there is the effect that textures have on color, warm color vs cooler colors (warm colors like red  tend to give the appearance of moving toward the viewer but have the negative side of being interpreted by many as angry or aggressive. Cooler colors like blue canbe read as a relaxed calm or a depressive mood. I can not forget the hue and saturation or color wheel realtionships now can I ?

Color me geek. Ya think I am overthinking this? 🙂

So, You Want to Fix the World

So, you want to fix the world.
Start by looking beyond what you think is going on to find what is really going on.

In my neighborhood I am the minority. I am defined as “white”. The majority of my neighbors are defined as “black”. The next largest ethnic group would be “hispanic”.

I have lived in the same place since 1981. I moved in to a racially/ethnically diverse area with little thought about it. I naively believed it did not matter. Fast forward to 2006 – IT MATTERS!

At first glance it is easy to decide that race is the key issue here – but is it really? What has changed in the past two decades can steer the direction from one of race to one of economics. Property values have skyrocketed making it less and less financially feasible for many of us to move upward or out. The large immigration from the bay area folks has sealed our fate. Those of us left/stuck here are not rich. Many owners have rented their homes out via Section 8 to get out. Now the average household is well below the national poverty level. If poverty breeds violence – ding – ding – ding – we have a winner!

Washing my truck out in front of my home can steer the direction back from economics to race. While vacuuming the inside out a young black male for whatever reason needs to walk up stick his head and upper body into my vehicle, glance at the radio, then scan the contents of my vehicle, snicker, glance up and give me a look that can be only described as designed to provoke fear, and then walk away, glancing back at me until he is out of sight. Later only to return with two friends conversing load enough for me to hear choice words: white devils, stereo, alarms, later, and chill nig**.

The outside of my truck is still dirty. The ghetto bird (a police helicopter usually following a suspect) is flying overhead. The speaker of a car that just drove by has knocked another picture off the wall. ..

So, you want to fix the world?