No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Not entirely!
But with so many people leaving a twitter and internet trail, it is a very good place to start.
Actually, from a serious intelligence generation point of view it is an awful place to start. But I have already had this discussion, albeit with a slightly different starting point, with Mr. Nabavi, gent of this parish. I even bought him lunch so we could talk face to face and so that I could diagrammatically demonstrate he was wrong.
However, after this morning I am never going to rehearse arguments on this site. So I shall not repeat myself.
Foreign politicians leave very public trails, and are certainly worth monitoring as are foreign newspapers and other media.
They certainly do leave very public trails, Doc, but I was talking about serious intelligence generation.
Clearly different targets require different approaches, but we were discussing gathering intelligence on politicians engaged in Brexit negotiations.
The key word there, Doc, is intelligence. That is very different from public pronunciations, twitter feed and all that crap, most of which I expect is handled by staffers and not the principle.
Brexit Negotiations are the most critical thing on HMG's agenda today so I would expect the majority of effort of the FCO to be directed to that end.
No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Believe it or not, most of the work of the intelligence services is interpreting publicly available information.
If it's Trump +1.8% (Florida), he puts it in the Trump column. If it's Clinton +2.0% (Pennsylvania), he puts it in the to close to call column.
Even the 1.8% Trump lead in Florida is only a figure he's concocted himself.
He quotes a couple of polls/projections that show Trump ahead in Florida, but 538 shows 21 Florida polls done this month, and 16 show Clinton in the lead, compared with 2 ties and 3 Trump leads.
Yet even with that degree of selection, he still couldn't get Trump over the winning line!
No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Believe it or not, most of the work of the intelligence services is interpreting publicly available information.
Shy trumpers are so shy, Even conway, most of Trump's surrogates and the GOP dont think they exist and Trump is tanking in the polls.
It is not so much 'shy' Trumpers which will do it for him as 'turning out' Trumpers ie white working class voters who have not voted for years but will this year while African American and young voters who turned out for Obama stay at home rather than vote for Hillary. 3 pollsters have Trump ahead or tied so also depends which polls you look at
I don't buy that.
We have not seen surges in registrations of Trump demographics or early voting by them, we have however seen surges in registrations by demographics hostile to Trump.
Have we? I have seen no surge in early voting by African Americans compared to 2012 and as I said Trump is winning more Democrats than Hillary is winning Republicans according to Rasmussen so party ID may not be much to go on either
In a little over 2 weeks we will know.
I am watching the beginning of Downfall (though will record the rest). I am reminded of Steiner's phantom divisions...
Well as you say we will find out on the night but if white blue collar Democrats turn out for Trump we are in for a long one, goodnight
No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Not entirely!
But with so many people leaving a twitter and internet trail, it is a very good place to start.
Actually, from a serious intelligence generation point of view it is an awful place to start. But I have already had this discussion, albeit with a slightly different starting point, with Mr. Nabavi, gent of this parish. I even bought him lunch so we could talk face to face and so that I could diagrammatically demonstrate he was wrong.
However, after this morning I am never going to rehearse arguments on this site. So I shall not repeat myself.
Foreign politicians leave very public trails, and are certainly worth monitoring as are foreign newspapers and other media.
They certainly do leave very public trails, Doc, but I was talking about serious intelligence generation.
Clearly different targets require different approaches, but we were discussing gathering intelligence on politicians engaged in Brexit negotiations.
The key word there, Doc, is intelligence. That is very different from public pronunciations, twitter feed and all that crap, most of which I expect is handled by staffers and not the principle.
Brexit Negotiations are the most critical thing on HMG's agenda today so I would expect the majority of effort of the FCO to be directed to that end.
If you define intelligence as knowledge not in the public domain, then tautologically it is not derived in the public domain.
In reality the FCO combines publicly gleaned information with covertly acquired information.
If you define intelligence as knowledge not in the public domain, then tautologically it is not derived in the public domain.
In reality the FCO combines publicly gleaned information with covertly acquired information.
The difference between information, intelligence and knowledge and the processes needed to move between all three occupied a large chunk of my career.
It is late, so I think, I'll just say:
I do not agree that intelligence is mostly gleaned from publicly available sources (your point which kicked this discussion off)
I would not define intelligence as knowledge that is not in the public domain. Aside from anything else that would be to confuse the meaning of information, intelligence and knowledge.
And on that point, lest I become even more indiscreet, I think I had better go to bed.
Shy trumpers are so shy, Even conway, most of Trump's surrogates and the GOP dont think they exist and Trump is tanking in the polls.
It is not so much 'shy' Trumpers which will do it for him as 'turning out' Trumpers ie white working class voters who have not voted for years but will this year while African American and young voters who turned out for Obama stay at home rather than vote for Hillary. 3 pollsters have Trump ahead or tied so also depends which polls you look at
La times poll is pointless.
RAS is less useless.
So 2 vs around 15 other polls. So yeah depends what u look at!
I think what's noticeable from your link is that in 2004 both those pollsters were very much in line with the average. The RCP average showed a Bush lead of 1.5 points, very close to the leads you quote - Rasmussen (1.7) and IBID-TIPP (2.1) - and to the result (2.4).
Their current results aren't in line with the average, which according to RCP is a 5.9 point lead for Clinton.The fact that they and the average and the result all agreed in 2004 doesn't seem to be much help in deciding who is right now.
No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Believe it or not, most of the work of the intelligence services is interpreting publicly available information.
Sort of true actually. The declining birth rate in Europe is a major ongoing demographic problem that the US and UK don't suffer from.
Not a problem France has, of course.
It's the only country in the world where college educated women have above average birth rates.
Don't they have huge tax incentives for middle class families in France though? IIRC you said previously that a family with three kids gets our equivalanet of a household personal allowance of €50-60k, below which they don't pay income tax.
Shy trumpers are so shy, Even conway, most of Trump's surrogates and the GOP dont think they exist and Trump is tanking in the polls.
It is not so much 'shy' Trumpers which will do it for him as 'turning out' Trumpers ie white working class voters who have not voted for years but will this year while African American and young voters who turned out for Obama stay at home rather than vote for Hillary. 3 pollsters have Trump ahead or tied so also depends which polls you look at
La times poll is pointless.
RAS is less useless.
So 2 vs around 15 other polls. So yeah depends what u look at!
I think what's noticeable from your link is that in 2004 both those pollsters were very much in line with the average. The RCP average showed a Bush lead of 1.5 points, very close to the leads you quote - Rasmussen (1.7) and IBID-TIPP (2.1) - and to the result (2.4).
Their current results aren't in line with the average, which according to RCP is a 5.9 point lead for Clinton.The fact that they and the average and the result all agreed in 2004 doesn't seem to be much help in deciding who is right now.
Also final polls from previous cycles may not be comparable with the polls we're seeing now, as the partisan pollsters tend to mysteriously swing in line with the herd at the last minute.
No surprises there! And I would be disappointed if our spooks were not doing the same in reverse.
Isn't this what we have intelligence services for?
Spies being spies, as you say it's hardly news. Im sure we are trying to get into those who will be on the other side of the EU negotiations.
A lot of this work does not involve nefarious activity, a lot is just assembling information in the public domain, for example newspaper reporting of party congresses, politicians twitter etc.
So that huge building just South of Vauxhall Bridge is full of people reading publicly available information and assembling it into reports? Who knew?
Believe it or not, most of the work of the intelligence services is interpreting publicly available information.
And your source for that is ?
Tom Clancy novels, mostly.
That is a major difference between the US and UK. In the US, a large part of the CIA does precisely this. In the UK, MI6 used to be mandated only to concern itself with clandestine sources of information, the logic being you don't need spies to collect and collate open sources.
I do not know if this is still the case in the UK.
Believe it or not, most of the work of the intelligence services is interpreting publicly available information.
And your source for that is ?
In The Secret War by Max Hastings, he makes the point that much humint can be matched by carefully reading and summarising publicly available sources: not just newspapers, but production statistics, commercial releases, et al
Comments
Brexit Negotiations are the most critical thing on HMG's agenda today so I would expect the majority of effort of the FCO to be directed to that end.
He quotes a couple of polls/projections that show Trump ahead in Florida, but 538 shows 21 Florida polls done this month, and 16 show Clinton in the lead, compared with 2 ties and 3 Trump leads.
Yet even with that degree of selection, he still couldn't get Trump over the winning line!
In reality the FCO combines publicly gleaned information with covertly acquired information.
It is late, so I think, I'll just say:
I do not agree that intelligence is mostly gleaned from publicly available sources (your point which kicked this discussion off)
I would not define intelligence as knowledge that is not in the public domain. Aside from anything else that would be to confuse the meaning of information, intelligence and knowledge.
And on that point, lest I become even more indiscreet, I think I had better go to bed.
Their current results aren't in line with the average, which according to RCP is a 5.9 point lead for Clinton.The fact that they and the average and the result all agreed in 2004 doesn't seem to be much help in deciding who is right now.
It's the only country in the world where college educated women have above average birth rates.
I do not know if this is still the case in the UK.
Sigint, on the other hand...