Social Media and Border Security

Over the past few weeks I've had a chance to dig into many issues associated with protecting the Southern border between Texas and Mexico.   There are many problems that need to be addressed to effectively conduct the LE mission in this area.  There are several types of problems that need to be addressed, the easiest ones deal with technology.  The more difficult problems deal with policy at the government/agency level, and more interpersonal communications issues such as building trust with ones peers in other agencies as well as other countries.

Social media technologies may be used to solve many of these problems including interpersonal communication.  As people build relationships with their peers the level of trust increases naturally.  As cross-agency collaboration is used more, the collective intelligence of the entire group is brought to bear on the actual problem of security along the border rather than wasting resources solving less important problems.  By changing policies where appropriate and using social media technology and media convergence the LE community can realize great successes in their day-to-day operations.

E-Government Technology and Law Enforcement: COPLINK

The LE community is beginning to take advantage of technology to reap the benefits of information sharing and collective intelligence.  The COPLINK application is an integrated information system that aims to facilitate timely data access and improved inter/intra-agency collaboration/information sharing.  Hu et. al provide a research model dealing with Officer acceptance of the 2009 release of COPLINK Mobile, an application for handheld devices and tablets to provide easy access to COPLINK functionality.  Their theoretical model regarding officer acceptance of new technology is directly relevent to my research dealing with LE Fusion and use of social media technology along the Southern Border.  Their article hypothesizes that: efficiency gain, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, facilitating conditions, timely assistance, social influence and behavioral intention are all contributing factors associated with LE Officer Mobile Link acceptance.  One area their model can be improved to to add some items that influence perception of efficiency gain.  Hu et. al define what they believe efficiency gain entails.  What I need to show is how technology affects this major contributor to acceptance.  There are human factors pieces such as their ease of use, but I believe connectivity of data, the ability to search dispartate sources of data with one query, and the speed/performance of the system also have a large influence on use of the application.


Hu, P. J. H., Chen, H., Hu, H., Larson, C., & Butierez, C. (2010). Law enforcement officers' acceptance of advanced e-government technology: A survey study of COPLINK mobile. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

6 Ways LE uses Social Media

Found an interesting web post on mashable.com:  http://mashable.com/2010/03/17/law-enforcement-social-media/

Looks like there is a conference that took place in DC dealing with LE use of social media.  Many of the uses called out are ones that I have mentioned previously.  Nice to see some police forces are starting to take this seriously.  Looks like this is aligned at the local LE level.

Open Government Directive

The Obama administration has created the Open Government Initiative in an effort to make the Federal Government more transparent and responsive to the every day person.  They base their efforts on three principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration.

• Transparency in government is meant to promote accountability within the government, agencies post what they are doing and what their plans entail.  Then the public can comment on the plans and execution.
• Participation allows citizens to provide input to the government, brainstorm ideas and solutions.  It enables citizens to take an active role in developing government programs and policies.
• Collaboration encourages partnership between agencies to take advantage of each others strengths and build upon each other's successes.

The problems along the Southern border fall directly within the participation and collaboration areas.  The use of social media technology encourages participation and takes advantage of people's innate desire to make a difference.

Collaboration enables peer development and shortens time to reality for ideas by taking advantage of our nation's collective intelligence.

References:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive

Use of Social Media for Border Security

There are many problems associated with defending our Southern Border, some technological, some political, and some that just deal with social behavior of the workers.

Policy
One of the largest problems facing government organizations is aging policies.  There are many policies in place that prevent interaction among government agencies, one of them deals with the "need to know".  There are a few factors that affect a person's access to sensitive data to of which are the individual's security clearance (the level of trust placed in the person by the government) and their "need to know".  Just because an individual has the proper clearance doesn't mean they have the "need to know" the information.  This policy is starting to change, beginning with the National Director of Intelligence creating the A-Space program for intelligence analysts to share their thoughts and collaborate with peers across the many organizations that  make of the Intelligence Community.  This policy is very limiting with respect to social media utilization.

Politics
In some cases there is still an us vs. them mentality when it comes to government agencies.  Agencies don't want to share information because it may give a competitive advantage to a "competing" agency.

Another political obstacle along the border deals with political differences between countries.  To effectively combat the human and drug trafficking across our Southern border, we need to work with Mexican officials.  How do you effectively share information with a foreign government when you have difficulty sharing with other US Government agencies?

Social
Along the political lines, how do you know if you can trust other agency officials or counterparts from foreign countries such as Mexico if you don't have an interpersonal relationship built?

Technology
The technology problems associated with collaboration along the border are somewhat easier to address although still a challenge.  How do you secure the collaborative environment, keeping out the "bad guys" while allowing the "good guys" to effectively communicate and share ideas?

I'll begin to address some of these challenges over the next several weeks of class.

Murray's four characteristics of a computer

Encyclopedic: Computers are encyclopedic in that they allow us to access vast amounts of data almost instantly. Once we have access to the data we are able to transform the data into information that is useful for our purposes. What is also important is that computers allow us to access the data in many different formats. We are long past just thinking about data as text and numbers. We now have access to videos, online presentations, podcasts, etc. that enable us to get a better understanding of data from many different viewpoints.

Participatory: Computers allow us to collaborate with one another without being physically present. We can now gather the information noted above and get together to hypothesize about data and outcomes and create higher quality products as a result. The participatory nature allows us to take advantage of our collective intelligence. Computers are also participator in that we are able to directly interact with the machine and receive feedback through well-defined interfaces with set behavior.

Procedural: The procedural aspect of computers is what provides the behaviors associated with the interfaces. Programmers write procedures that enforce the rules of interaction with the computer.

Spatial: As computers become more powerful we are able to take advantage of their spatial nature. As Griz noted we are able to move up and down and interact with the computer spatially. What is becoming more evident is that the spatial nature is increasing and becoming more immersive. For example, the X Box now allows you to be the controller. It won't be long before we can interact with 3D computer interfaces just using our natural body motions.

Murray's four characteristics of a computer

Encyclopedic: Computers are encyclopedic in that they allow us to access vast amounts of data almost instantly. Once we have access to the data we are able to transform the data into information that is useful for our purposes. What is also important is that computers allow us to access the data in many different formats. We are long past just thinking about data as text and numbers. We now have access to videos, online presentations, podcasts, etc. that enable us to get a better understanding of data from many different viewpoints.

Participatory: Computers allow us to collaborate with one another without being physically present. We can now gather the information noted above and get together to hypothesize about data and outcomes and create higher quality products as a result. The participatory nature allows us to take advantage of our collective intelligence. Computers are also participator in that we are able to directly interact with the machine and receive feedback through well-defined interfaces with set behavior.

Procedural: The procedural aspect of computers is what provides the behaviors associated with the interfaces. Programmers write procedures that enforce the rules of interaction with the computer.

Spatial: As computers become more powerful we are able to take advantage of their spatial nature. As Griz noted we are able to move up and down and interact with the computer spatially. What is becoming more evident is that the spatial nature is increasing and becoming more immersive. For example, the X Box now allows you to be the controller. It won't be long before we can interact with 3D computer interfaces just using our natural body motions.

EM820 Week3 part 2

Q:  What are the technical AND economic transformations that are making the new emerging media practices possible? Be specific—not just internet, but how, what capacities, materials, etc. Think about other technologies, roads, satellites, phone, alternative energy sources, ..

 

A:  It seems to me the continuously lowering cost of developing content and hardware are making new emerging media practices possible. For instance, it really wasn't that long ago that cellular phones were gigantic (by modern standards) and resembled normal wired phones; they were so expensive that only the wealthy were able to take advantage of them. Now, it seems that almost everyone has a cell phone that fits in our pockets and many of us have smart phones that are more powerful than the first computer I owned way back in the 1980's. As the production costs continue to fall, more powerful phones will be able to be given away free and even more people will be able to access their power.

Another enabling practice is the open-source movement. Taking advantage of the skills of multitudes of talented people, software applications/services are becoming more and more advanced/reliable. The open-source market is forcing traditional companies and markets to reconcile their business practices with the new consumer expectation of "free".

EM820 Strategic Use of Social Media Week 3

Remediation: presenting content through a new media format than originally presented or conceptualized.

Mediacy: The goal of mediacy is to immerse the user/viewer into the content. To basically make them forget the interface exists.

Hypermediacy: The goal of hypermediacy is to remind the user of the interface while they are using the content. In many cases it is used for organizational purposes.

It was interesting to me to think about perspective when trying to understand these concepts. There are the creators, the presenters, and the users for each of these terms. Each perspective can be accomplished through human action or a tool/media of some sort (I guess a human can present content so can be considered a form of media also).

Older Technologies:
Remediation - Cavemen and other ancient cultures drew pictures on stone walls to communicate ideas and tell stories. Story telling was remediated to take advantage of newer technology by writing on paper using ink. The content (story) was originally presented as a picture on a stone and was remediated via pen and ink with paper.

Mediacy - Sticking with the pen and paper for technology, these tools were created to allow the user (author) to immerse themselves in their thoughts, "seemlessly" transferring their ideas to paper.

Hypermediacy: Print layouts are a form of hypermediacy. The content on printed pages are organized in such a way that you are able to quickly tell where one article or advertisement ends and another begins.

Newer Technologies:
I believe the Disney is well on their way to mastering these concepts beginning with:
Remediation - They take classic fairy tales or TV shows and remediate them as animated films which they can then turn into interactive video games or amusement park rides.

Hypermediacy - sticking with Disney. At Disney World you enter a line that wraps seemingly endlessly through roped off areas to organize the crowds. They take advantage of this "organization" to begin the ride experience communicating parts of the story you are about to enter. For example, with the Tower of Terror ride at Disney MGM you enter the Hollywood Hotel lobby. you are reminded of the interface by the ropes keeping you in line but there are decorations and "cast members" dressed in period clothing to help set the mood.

Immediacy - Once you reach the head of the line you are immersed in a Twilight Zone episode narrated by Rod Serling. It starts as a TV show interface and quickly becomes an immersive experience as you ride the doomed elevator up to your room. Following along with the story you get totally immersed, seeing the ghosts of the original victims in the story on different floors of the hotel.

You are finally snapped back to reality when you enter the Twilight Zone and the elevator doors open and you get a panoramic view of the theme park with nothing in front of you just the open/missing elevator shaft...pause long enough to realize what is happening and scream...then plummet down the elevator shaft to complete the ride.

EM835 Day 1

Creating my required blog and I am wondering how I can use this tool for my class and dissertation.