I have mentioned before, Tracking NSA/CIA/FBI Agents Just Got Easier, The DEA is Stalking You!, how citizens can invite federal agents to join the gold fish bowl being prepared for the average citizen.
Of course, that’s just me saying it, unless and until the Pentagon confirms the crowdsourcing of map data!
Aliya Sternstein writes
in Soldiers to Help Crowdsource Spy Maps:
…
“What a great idea if we can get our soldiers adding fidelity to the maps and operational picture that we already have” in Defense systems, Gordon told Nextgov. “All it requires is pushing out our product in a manner that they can add data to it against a common framework.”Comparing mapping parties to combat support activities, she said, soldiers are deployed in some pretty remote areas where U.S. forces are not always familiar with the roads and the land, partly because they tend to change.
If troops have a base layer, “they can do basically the same things that that social party does and just drop pins and add data,” Gordon said from a meeting room at the annual Esri conference. “Think about some of the places in Africa and some of the less advantaged countries that just don’t have addresses in the way we do” in the United States.
…
Of course, you already realize the value of crowd-sourcing surveillance of government agents but for the c-suite crowd, confirmation from a respected source (the Pentagon) may help push your citizen surveillance proposal forward.
BTW, while looking at Army GeoData research plans (pages 228-232), I ran across this passage:
This effort integrates behavior and population dynamics research and analysis to depict the operational environment including culture, demographics, terrain, climate, and infrastructure, into geospatial frameworks. Research exploits existing open source text, leverages multi-media and cartographic materials, and investigates data collection methods to ingest geospatial data directly from the tactical edge to characterize parameters of social, cultural, and economic geography. Results of this research augment existing conventional geospatial datasets by providing the rich context of the human aspects of the operational environment, which offers a holistic understanding of the operational environment for the Warfighter. This item continues efforts from Imagery and GeoData Sciences, and Geospatial and Temporal Information Structure and Framework and complements the work in PE 0602784A/Project T41.
Doesn’t that just reek with subjects that would be identified differently in intersecting information systems?
One solution would be to fashion top down mapping systems that are months if not years behind demands in an operational environment. Sort of like tanks that overheat in jungle warfare.
Or you could do something a bit more dynamic that provides a “good enough” mapping for operational needs and yet also has the information necessary to integrate it with other temporary solutions.