Sources And Methods: How-To

Showing posts with label How-To. Show all posts

Monday, October 12, 2009

How To Get A Job In Intelligence (Final Version With Abstract)

Abstract:

I wrote this series of posts to help entry-level job seekers understand the broader market for intelligence professionals and, particularly, intelligence analysts. I start by taking a look at not only national security but also business and law enforcement employment prospects for intelligence professionals and continue with detailed advice along with a number of places to look for employment. The series contains multiple links for job hunters as well as a substantial amount of background information on everything from resumes to interview skills to appropriate dress. Of particular interest to most job hunters should be the extensive and often lengthy comments to many of these posts.

HTML Version:

Part 1 -- Introduction
Part 2 -- The Intelligence Job Market From 20,000 Feet
Part 3 -- The Good News!
Part 4 -- Even Better News!
Part 5 -- Beyond The Big Three
Part 6 -- Beyond Borders
Part 7 -- Beyond Borders: India, Europe And South Africa
Part 8 -- Going It On Your Own
Part 9 -- The 5 Things You Must Have
Part 10 -- Advice From The Trenches
Special Report: Where The Jobs Are, 2009
Part 11 -- Advice From Intelligence Veterans
Part 12 -- Intelligence Job Links
Annex 1 -- "Plan B" Careers

Monday, April 13, 2009

How To Detect Deception, Using Second Life In The Classroom And Sister Wikis (Link List)

Image by a4gpa via Flickr

Just back from the high desert and busy catching up. Here are a few links that caught my eye:

How To Detect Deception. The Confidential Resource points to this series of posts (Part 1, Part 2) on detecting deception in interviews over at The Keyboard Detective. The posts contain some good material and a fair number of links to other interesting stuff.
Second Life In Education. I have often blogged about using Wikispaces for analytic projects but Wikispaces is a platform to over a half a million wikis of various types. One of the more interesting ones I recently ran across (via New World Notes) is a wiki on using Second Life In Education. Lots of cool projects you can do/places you can go here with students.
8 Sister Wikis From Wikipedia. The always helpful MakeUseOf.com has put together a list of "sister" projects to Wikipedia that everyone should know about. My favorites are the Wikimedia Commons, because it links to a number of free or public domain graphics, and Wikiversity, because it often has useful tutorials on a variety of topics.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Evaluating Intelligence...The Wiki Way! (Wikispaces)

Last week I finally finished my bit of "experimental scholarship" on the question of evaluating intelligence. One of the tools one of our amazing work study students (Thanks, Aleksandra!) built to help me with the analysis was a wiki with all of the individual statements from the three documents (One NIE and two ICAs) on individual pages. We then used the wiki to help sort through the various estimative statements.

I have decided to make the wiki public so that other students, academics and intel professionals can make use of it if they wish (I will have some specific examples of classroom activities at the end of the post).

To access the wiki you can click on the links above or the picture below. You should get a page that looks something like the picture below.

The three links in the main frame of the wiki go to the three documents used in my study. The big blue button in the main frame (labelled "2002 NIE Estimative Statements") links to all of the estimative statements in the three documents. When you click on it, you should get a page that looks something like the one below:

Clicking on any one of these links takes you to a page (like the one below) where you can make your case for or against the estimative statement. You can also just comment if you like.

You can add your comment or analysis by clicking on the Discussion tab (circled in red). This should take you to a page that looks something like the one below:

Note the space for your comment (indicated by the red arrow). You can also click on and see previous comments by others (note the links in the red circle).

This could serve as an excellent classroom exercise in evaluating intelligence. I could imagine students given several of the statements to research with the assignment to post their answers to the wiki. This way, they could see what others have to say and the after action discussion could serve as a stepping off point on the broader question of evaluating intelligence. It is also an easy and useful introduction to wiki technology.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

How-To: Determining Source Reliability On The Internet (Link List)

There are a number of great sites (mostly libraries) where there is good guidance on how to evaluate internet based sources. I intend, in this post, to list some of those sites and identify some up-and-coming tools. Finally, I want to highlight an important contribution to this literature that specifically pertains to intelligence analysis.

Virtually every good research library has a page dedicated to evaluating internet based sources. Some good examples include, among others:

The Library of Congress
Purdue's Library and Online Writing Lab
U Cal Berkeley's Library
and checklists from New Mexico State University Library, the Milner Library at Illinois State and the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire's 10 C's

Beyond these resources there are also a couple of new automated tools that are available for checking the accuracy and reliability of some internet sites. Beyond those that look for malware (such as McAfee's Site Advisor), there are two products which I have found particularly interesting as they are primarily designed to examine content.

The first is SpinSpotter (a firefox extension). SpinSpotter (which is "very" beta right now) allows you to annotate web sites for "spin" and to view other people's evaluations on websites that have already been evaluated. At some point (although it is unclear when), a computer algorithm will kick in (once it has learned enough about how to spot spin from thousands of reader's input) and begin to automatically mark up pages. This is when the tool will get really interesting...

The second project, WikiTrust, developed by the University of California, Santa Cruz WikiLab, is designed to use data from any MediaWiki based product (such as Wikipedia or Intellipedia) and, in turn, be able to automatically indicate how "trustworthy" the content of that wiki is. You can actually see a demo of it here based on 2007 data. You can also download the software that will allow you to apply the trust algorithm to any MediaWiki based wiki today. The problem is, of course, that the person applying the code also has to control the wiki (Hmmm...I wonder if Intellipedia uses this...I wonder why Wikipedia doesn't use it now...).

None of these solutions specifically had the intelligence professional in mind, however. This has changed recently with Dax Norman's recent online publication of his 2001 Joint Military Intelligence College/National Defense Intelligence College thesis, usefully titled How To Identify Credible Sources On The Web. Dax is the curriculum manager at the National Cryptologic School and one of the most intelligent and insightful people I know. Possessed of deep experience and a darn good mind, he has spent a good bit of time reflecting on how best to improve the analytic process. As a result, he is always worth listening to.

His thesis is particularly well worth the read for anyone who is interested in the subject. While much as been done in the area of assessing internet sources (see above), his take-away -- a research based checklist of key variables in assessing source reliability -- is as good today as it was in 2001.

If you are interested in the details of this scoring system, how it was derived and validated, I will have to refer you to the thesis. Using the checklist, however, is dead easy. Just check the blocks, add up the total and compare it to the scale on top. While I am virtually certain that Dax would not claim that this checklist should replace analytic judgment, I do think that it is far better than a guess-timate or, even worse, no assessment of source reliability at all.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

How-To: More On RSS Feeds

I promised a bit more about RSS feeds and how to make them useful. First, in case you forgot or you have not had time to read the previous two posts (Part 1 and Part 2) in this series, let's take another look at why RSS feeds are a good thing in the video below:

Most feed readers today offer many other features besides simply making RSS feeds accessible, however. Google Reader, my preferred reader, offers a wide variety of options for managing the data that comes into the reader as do most other readers.

For example, Google Reader allows you to star items or tag them with key words so they are easy to find later on. You can also easily share items of interest on other forums or websites. For example, all of the items in the SAM's Shared Items box at the right are items that I picked out of my reader and "shared". This allows me to simply and easily feature documents and articles on this site that I would otherwise never have time to write about.

Adding feeds to a reader is so easy and can prove to be so useful that it is also necessary to go back periodically and weed out those feeds that are no longer helping. Fortunately, most readers can track some of your usage data and will help you make these decisions. Google Reader, for example, provides a "Trends" feature that tells you, among other things, how often you actually read a particular feed as well as how active a particular feed is. In this way you can easily keep your subscriptions from growing out of hand, avoiding, in the process, turning out like this guy:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

How-To: Automatically Translate Foreign Language Blogs And Websites Using RSS Feeds, Google Reader And Mloovi (Part 2)

Part 1 contained background material on RSS feeds (and why they are so useful for intelligence analysis) and step by step instructions on how to set up Google Reader and get some interesting feeds into it. Today, I want to show you how to find interesting feeds in foreign languages and how to use Mloovi.com to get automaticaly translated feeds into Google Reader.

Mloovi is a new service that automatically translates feeds from 35 different foreign languages (including Russian, Chinese and Arabic but not, unfortunately, Farsi) into English. Mloovi is powered by Google Translate so it is not going to be any better than Google's service but it does offer some conveniences that Google currently does not provide. The step-by-step to get Mloovi to do its thing follows:

Step 1: Finding good feeds

If you don't already speak a language, finding good feeds in a foreign langauge can be difficult. How do you know what you are missing? Fortunately, there are a number of people who routinely post lists of good blogs in a foreign language. Searching for "best Chinese blogs", for example rapidly yields ChinaBlogList.org. Linguist oriented sites, like Lexiophile and its list of Top 100 Language Blogs, and the blogrolls of english language bloggers blogging about or living in a foreign country are also good places to troll for good foreign language blogs.

Step 2: Bring up Mloovi and enter an RSS feed from a foreign language blog or website

Getting the translated feed set up is relatively easy. Simply go to Mloovi's home page and enter the RSS feed's address (for most blogs this is simply the blog's URL but for more complex sites like Al Jazeera there are typically multiple feeds. For more information on how to deal with this see Part 1).

Let's use one of my favorite intelligence blogs, Silendo, as an example. Silendo is usually written in la bella lingua (Italian) but is always worth reading. In order to get the Silendo feed automatically translated to English, all you have to do is 1) enter Silendo's address into the space provided by Mloovi, 2) click on the language you want the blog to be translated to (in this case English), and 3) click translate (see image below):

Step 3: Decide to subscribe

Once Mloovi goes through its motions, you should get a screen that shows the translated versions of some of the recent posts from that feed. You can then take a look at these to determine if they are good enough for your purposes. Google Translate really only provides the gist of any particular post. It should, for example, be enough to see if the post is worth any more of your (or your professional translator's) time.

Once you make the decision to subscribe to the translated version of the blog, you should click on the "Subscribe" button on the page (See image below).

Step 4: Send the translated feed to Google Reader

The subscribe option should take you to a page much like the one below where one click should allow you to directly place your feed into Google Reader (or any of the other readers listed). In order for this to work, you should have Google Reader already up and running in another tab. Otherwise, it will take you to a page asking you to "Join Google Reader".

In the end, you should get this message in your Google Reader:

That's it. At this point you should be able to set up and use Google Reader with both English language and many foreign language blogs and websites. If you have any other tips or tricks, post them in the comments. I would love to know about them!

Thursday: Other Things You Can Do With Google Reader

Monday, October 20, 2008

How-To: Automatically Translate Foreign Language Blogs And Websites Using RSS Feeds, Google Reader And Mloovi (Part 1)

Using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds is one of the easiest ways to get the web to push relevant information to you. It never ceases to amaze me, however, how few people know how to use these feeds.

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to start getting access to RSS feeds using Google Reader and then (tomorrow) how to use Mloovi.com to automatically translate feeds from foreign sources and get those feeds into the reader as well.

Beginning at the beginning: What is an RSS feed?

RSS allows blogs and other websites to actually broadcast their content to the wider internet. Anyone who tunes in to a particular feed can have any new content appearing on that feed instantaneously pushed to an RSS feed reader (The advantages to this are substantial for analysts. Check out Push Vs. Pull Sources And Killer Intelligence Apps or this video by Michael Wesch for additional discussion of these advantages).

Step 1: Choose an RSS feed reader

The easiest way to tap into RSS Feeds is through an RSS feed reader (sometimes called an aggregator). This piece of software tracks the feeds you want to read. There are many readers out there and the discussion of which is best is a continuing subject of debate. I like to use Google Reader. It is simple to use, has good support and, because it is a Google product, you can reasonably expect it to remain around and improve over time.

Step 2: Sign up to use the reader

Google Reader requires you to have a Google Account. If you have Gmail or access to other Google web-based services, you likely already have a Google Account. You would use the same username/gmail address and password to sign into Google Reader as you would for Gmail or any of the other services. If you do not have a Google Account you can sign up for one here for free.

Step 3: Identifying a feed

You can subscribe to any site that has the RSS feed symbol in the address bar. Below is the address bar for SAM. As you can see, at the far right, there is an RSS feed symbol meaning that it is possible to subscribe using an RSS feed reader.

Step 4: Subscribe to a feed

Once you decide which feed you want, you will need to subscribe to it in your feed reader (in this case I will use Google Reader as an example but many other readers have similarly easy to use features). While there are several ways to do this, perhaps the easiest for the new user is to merely copy and paste the address of the blog you want to subscribe to into the "Add Subscription" bar on the middle lefthand side of Google Reader (see picture below). Once you have entered the feed, click on the add button.

Many large websites (such as CNN and ISN) have multiple RSS feeds. You can subscribe to all or some of them. For example, CNN's feed page allows you to pick and choose the feed you want. Simply copy and paste the feed into the "Add subscription" bar in Google Reader, click add and you are now subscribed to that feed as well.

If you want to have Google News Alerts on a particular topic sent to your feed reader as well, that is also relatively simple. Merely search for the news topic you want using Google News and then right click on the RSS button in the left hand column of the results from your search and then click on "Copy Link Location" (see image below). Paste this into the "Add Subscription" bar and click add. This technique should work with any news aggregation service that offers RSS feeds, not just Google News.

Once you have added the feeds to your feed reader, you can go back to the reader at any time and see what sites have posted updated content. Every news article, every blog post from all the content providers you think are worth tracking gets automatically and seamlessly sent to one place where you can then read, delete, forward or file with ease.

That is enough for today. Tomorrow I will walk you through how to identify and automatically translate foreign blogs and websites and get them into Google Reader.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

How To Pick A Lock With A "Bump Key" And 9 Other Interesting Or Useful How-to Videos (Lifehacker)

Close down The Farm! You can get all the black bag training you need on YouTube! Lifehacker published a list of 10 useful how-to videos recently. Some of them I have tried (like opening a bottle with a piece of paper) and could not get to work. Others I have tried and learned (like folding a t-shirt in 2 moves -- very cool!) but I didn't expect that learning how to make a bump key would make the top ten. Considered a "burglary tool" in many states, it is probably best to just watch the video...

You can see all of Lifehacker's top ten here but I have included one of my own favorite how-to videos below, "How to tie your shoes really fast":

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Weekend Project: Make Your Own Parabolic Microphone (Make via Boing Boing)

Boing Boing featured an interesting project from Make on how to build a parabolic mike out of dollar store stuff.

Umbrella Parabolic Microphone - video powered by Metacafe

Saturday, March 22, 2008

9 Great Map Resources (Links, Recommendations, How-to)

Being able to read, interpret and analyze mapping and other geospatial data is a set of critical skills for the intelligence studies student (and the intelligence professional!). Fortunately, there are a number of great mapping resources on the internet and the list keeps getting larger all the time. Everyone seems to have their favorites but here are a few of mine:

Finding Places. Locating some small and dusty spot somewhere in the world is often one of the most difficult things to do. The classic tool to make this process easier is the "gazetteer". There are two easy to use ones on the web, The World Gazetteer and the Global Gazetteer. Both provide location data and alternate spelling data along with a variety of other info including population figures and cloud cover. Of the two, I prefer the Global Gazetteer for its simple interface. Probably the most authoritative gazetteer is kindly provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency but the interface is complicated and the search can be slow. If all I have is a quick "where is such and such" kind of question, I usually use one of the other two.

Full Maps. Beyond Google Maps, Mapquest and other mapping sites, it is often more convenient to have a general reference map of a place or a region. Both the CIA and the UK's Foreign Office provide reference maps but, for me, the best maps come from the UN. There are three good places to look for these maps. The UN Cartographic Section has a great collection of general maps that is very easy to navigate. The UNHCR also has an excellent collection that is specifically focused on areas where there are humanitarian crises. The best place to go to see not only UN maps but also other maps from other contributing agencies (such as USAID) is the ReliefWeb Map Centre, however. ReliefWeb also has a variety of situational maps, as well as general reference maps, that are always incredibly useful. Because all three institutions are UN affiliated, there is some inevitable overlap but I have found maps on some sites that I can't find on the others.

Historical Maps. The best single place to go for historical maps is the venerable Perry-Castaneda Map Library. They have all sorts of good stuff there including some current maps as well as a number of historical maps of various regions.

Map Insights And Commentary. One of the best places to go to find out all sorts of interesting tidbits about an area is the Google Earth Community. You can search for just about anything and can be almost assured of finding out something you didn't know or that you wouldn't think anyone would take time to map out. For example, enter "SAM Sites" (that's Surface to Air Missiles not Sources And Methods, BTW...) and you will be surprised at what you find (Crowdsourcing at its best...). You can access the community through Google Earth but I like the online version because (unless the file is too large) you have the option to map the referenced overlay into Google Maps and this can save some time. For more insight, into Google Maps at least, there is the amazing blog, Google Maps Mania. Not only does it keep you up to date on what is happening in the world of Google Maps but it has an incredibly useful index of Google Maps mash-ups and tools in the right hand column.

Related Posts:
Terrorism Threat Map (AON)
Famine Early Warning System (USAID)
Good Resource On International Energy (EIA)
Excellent African Map Source (Le Monde Diplomatique)
High Priced Oil Adds Volatility To Power Scramble (NY Times)

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

How-To Sites (List)

There are several how-to sites that are worth bookmarking. I go to these locations for fairly complete instructions on a number of projects and they are typically a good place to start for just about any hands-on project:

WikiHow: "WikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual."

Instructables: "The world's biggest show and tell."

eHow: "How to do just about everything."

Sources And Methods