Press Releases — January-March, 2006

Global Security Consortium Holds Summit on Technologies Required for Effective Collection and Exploitation of Open Source Intelligence
Organization Urges Government Adoption of Commercial Technologies and Private Industry Alignment Around Common Framework

WASHINGTON, DC, March 02, 2006 - Today the Global Security Consortium, an organization dedicated to enhancing global and U.S. national security through the formation and management of public-private partnerships, hosted the 2006 Spring Summit on Open Source Intelligence at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. The principal sponsor of the event was classified information solution provider LexisNexis Special Services Inc., and co-sponsors included Basis Technology, Content Analyst, Convera, Cyveillance, Factiva, General Dynamics, Google, IBM, Intelligenxia, Inxight Software, L-3 Titan Group, Lockheed Martin, MetaCarta, SAIC and Strategic Analysis. The Homeland Security Policy Institute of The George Washington University also helped to facilitate the event.

The establishment last fall of the DNI Open Source Center by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) underscores the importance being placed on the intelligence community’s ability to collect, fuse and exploit “openly available information,” or OSINT, in order to successfully prosecute the Global War on Terror. ODNI lists these sources of information as including “[the] Internet, databases, press, radio, television, video, geospatial data, photos and commercial imagery.” Increasingly, the intelligence community is seeking to leverage innovative technologies and solutions from the private sector to transform this ocean of disparate information sources into actionable intelligence.

The GSC 2006 Spring Open Source Intelligence Summit provides an invaluable forum for senior leaders from the United States intelligence community and other agencies within the federal government to engage in a dialogue with private sector thought leaders regarding how to address the challenges associated with the collection and exploitation of open source intelligence information. The Global Security Consortium has played a pivotal role in working to align vendors around a common architectural framework for the collection, fusion, analysis and delivery of OSINT to analysts in the intelligence community.

“The Open Source Intelligence Summit brings together thought leaders in government and the private sector to define an effective strategy and develop the necessary framework -- including technology, interoperability and data format standards -- to effectively align government and industry relative to the open source intelligence challenge,” said Martin Ross, Executive Director of the Global Security Consortium. “Through public-private partnership, we can develop a strategy to effectively address US government open source needs with cross-vendor collaboration and implementation by the vendor community.”

The Summit tackled many of the difficult technology challenges facing the intelligence community relating to open source intelligence such as data quality, searching and indexing Web-based content, data fusion, language translation and fact and entity extraction.

“Mere search and retrieval technologies are not enough if we are to provide the intelligence community with the timely and meaningful information that they need to help detect, deter and defeat terrorist threats to the nation.  We need to enable analysts to quickly fuse, link and pinpoint specific information within the larger universe of open source data lest they become overloaded with irrelevant information,” said Norm Willox, CEO of LexisNexis Special Services Inc.

The event included a keynote address given by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment. Current and former government officials participating in the event included:

• Dr. Arthur H. Becker, Jr., Chief, Multi-INT Research, Program Leader KDD, NSA/CIA
• Mr. Frank J. Cilluffo, Former Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security
• Mr. Eliot A. Jardines, Asst. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source, ODNI
• Mr. Robert P. Liscouski, Member, Intelligence Science Board, ODNI, and Former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, DHS
• Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, Former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, CIA
• Lt. Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF Retired, Former Director, National Security Agency
• Mr. Douglas J. Naquin, Director, DNI Open Source Center, ODNI
• Ms. Kelly Nutwell, Chief of Internet Exploitation Team, DNI Open Source Center
• Thomas W. Hall, Director of Strategy and Architecture, DNI Open Source Center
• Dr. William Schneider, Jr., Chairman, Defense Science Board, DoD

Private sector panelists included representatives from:

• Basis Technology
• Content Analyst
• Converav
• Cyveillance
• Factiva
• General Dynamics
• Google
• IBM
• Intelligenxia
• Inxight
• L-3 Communications Titan Group
• LexisNexis Special Services Inc.
• Lockheed Martin
• MetaCarta
• SAIC
• Strategic Analysis
• Veritas Analytics