Crowdsourcing Security

Two Tales of Crowdsourcing

The book Wikinomics begins with a story about Rob McEwen, CEO of Goldcorp Inc. In 1999 the small goldmining firm was threatened by a host of problems; if it did not find substantial new gold deposits, its mine would likely close and bring the company down. The company's geologists had reason to believe their property was brimming with further gold deposits--up to thirty times their current production--but the geologists struggled to provide specifics. The company was at an impasse.

In March of 2000, McEwan did something that blew apart traditional business models and saved his company: he put all his company's proprietary geological data on the Internet for public viewing and announced the "Goldcorp Challenge" with $575,000 of prize money for locating new gold deposits. He crowdsourced the problem to the public.

The authors write, "Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding in to Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. 'We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in thh industry,' says McEwen."

The authors conclude, "Today Goldcorp is reaping the fruits of its open source approach to exploration. Not only did the contest yield copious quantities of gold, it catapulted his underperforming $100 million company into a $9 billion juggernaut while transforming a backward mining site in Northern Ontario into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry.

Second anecdote: a couple weeks ago, former intelligence analyst Matthew Burton wrote about the Jim Gray Rescue Effort. I quote from Burton's article:


Jim Gray was a database pioneer based in San Francisco. He disappeared while sailing in the Bay area last January. He was never found.

But his friends, many of whom were Silicon Valley magnates, did their best to try. One of these friends retasked DigitalGlobe imagery satellites to shoot fresh photos over 3,500 square miles of sea. The result was 1400 gigantic images. So coders automatically split the images up into 560,000 smaller ones that could be easily reviewed; someone else contributed a computer program that automatically sharpened all of the images.

Now that they had over a half million pictures, they needed a way to solicit volunteers to look at them. Amazon.com already had a ready-made solution, so the images were posted on a special page that let virtual volunteers cull through these images in search of Gray's sailboat. 12,000 volunteers reviewed all 560,000 images three times each.

All of that happened in three days. They didn't find Gray's sailboat. But it was the largest search party in history, on top of being simply amazing.

The Web's speed and freedom made it possible. Had this job been given to an organization with a closed network, this never would have happened.

What is Crowdsourcing?

Wikipedia says, "Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call."

Several good books deal with the subject: Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams,
The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, and Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, to name a few.

Crowdsourcing, and its related phenomena, are increasingly important parts of our lives. The Internet itself is the most foundational example. Nobody "runs" the Internet; rather, it is the cumulative result of the innovation and creativity of hundreds of millions of users around the world. Another example is "Open Source" programming, which has been a crucial part of the software development industry for years; the computer operating system Linux, developed by the open source community, is the classic example. Wikipedia is a dynamic encyclopedia, with content created entirely by users. Second Life is a 3D virtual world with restaurants, nightclubs, islands, and more created entirely by the users who reside and play there. Several open source textbook projects exist. A lively debate is underway about the value of open source in the intelligence community. Grey Goose is one open source intelligent effort currently underway.

I could write at length about the value and dynamics of crowdsourcing, but I'll leave it to the authors of the books mentioned above. Suffice it to say, I believe crowdsourcing is one of the most important and revolutionary trends in today's world. It has already shown its power to create products that traditional hierarchical organizations never could.

The Value of Crowdsourcing Security

I don't know the exact length of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but a few minutes with Google Earth suggests it's in the vicinity of 1200 miles. No matter. The important thing is that it is too long, and too treacherous, for scarce US troops to adequately patrol on foot. ISR aircraft like Predators can help, but the US simply does not have enough aircraft, pilots, or intelligence analysts to match the scale of the problem. As a result, insurgents have crossed this border at will, greatly complicating efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan.

Now imagine a thought experiment. I am not advocating a specific suggestion here, just trying to prove a point. Recall the power, flexibility, and scale of the Jim Gray search. What can we learn?

Imagine the US erected a thirty-foot pole every mile or so on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, with a swiveling video camera, solar panel, and satellite Internet connection mounted on top. Now imagine all of these videos feeds were accessible on the Internet, live, perhaps through an interface like Google Earth. Click the camera you want, and any American--or Korean, or Frenchman for that matter--could watch a live stretch of Afghanistan. Over the Internet, users could rotate or zoom each camera. The technology isn't cosmic; in fact, some armchair hunters already use similar systems to remotely hunt deer hundreds of miles away. Compared with one state-of-the-art aircraft, the cost of the entire project would be relatively cheap.

Now wrap the thing up in a basic collaborative workspace. Have real-time statistics, showing which cameras are being manned and which aren't. Let multiple users viewing the same camera chat with each other. Create spaces where self-organizing communities of armchair intelligence analysts can recruit members, discuss ideas, or analyze suspicious snapshots. Finally, give the whole project legitimate channels to interface with the US military. When a community monitoring a camera sees something suspicious--those guys lugging an SA-14 through the mountains, for example--they should have a way of reporting the event to a designated Intelligence cell that can review the event, sift the wheat from the chaff, and report useful intelligence up the chain. The military would do the job of acting on whatever intelligence does come up. If it's conducting an operation near the border, or has other legitimate OPSEC needs, it could simply black out portions of the camera grid.

Now that the infrastructure is in place for crowd-sourced surveillance, you need to promote and incentivize it. You'll find hordes of geospatial enthusiasts on the Internet, who spend hours searching Google Earth for quirks like plane crashes or airliners in flight. How about encouraging them to participate? Why not ask the moms and dads, brothers and sisters, of our servicemen if they want to give an hour or two each week to do important work, from their own living rooms, that will help Johnnie in Afghanistan? If the average American knew they could play a concrete role in helping our aims in Afghanistan or Iraq, I think thousands would step up. Incentives could help, too. The most active users and communities could rack up merits for their work, much like soldiers accrue medals. Maybe top users could be recognized at military or intelligence conferences. Who knows.

With some good brainstorming, I'm sure we could find ways to apply this kind of methodology in urban environments as well. Think back to Baghdad in 2005-2006; terrified Iraqis in huddled in their homes while thugs and criminals butchered each other in the streets, and scarce American troops tried to keep peace. Every Iraqi citizen had a vested interest in Baghdad's security, but few could do anything to contribute. Are there ways to turn these average Iraqis from helpless victims into active defenders of their own security? I suppose one could argue that the rise of the Sons of Iraq was exactly that.


Again, I am not necessarily advocating a specific solution. But I am trying to advocate thinking outside of the box. The military is a rigid hierarchical organization, with a strong organizational tendency to overclassify information in the name of OPSEC. But it should take a lesson from Goldcorp. In today's world, relaxing our stranglehold on information--if done appropriately--can bring enormous benefits. Crowdsourcing opens up a vast pool of talent and labor that is dynamic, responsive, and creative. The military should look for suitable ways to integrate this power into its culture.