Unearthing the Dead, and Finding Solace

Most of you probably know Xeni Jardin for her fun, flirty postings on the Boing Boing uberblog. But beneath the beneath the glam exterior is one bad-ass reporter.

Take the epic, five-part, multimedia series Xeni has put together for NPR, after spending a month in dirt-poor, war-ravaged Guatemala. "An estimated 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala's decades-long civil war, and another 100,000 'disappeared,'" she writes, to introduce the first installment. "Many survivors are still searching for the remains of their loved ones."

One group of forensic anthropologists is using technology to help the country come to terms with its past. For 12 years, the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) has been exhuming clandestine graves that hold victims killed in political massacres.

Most of the people killed in Guatemala's 36-year civil war were indigenous. The army's scorched-earth policy sometimes leveled entire villages.

In traditional Mayan culture, the dead and the living are believed to be in constant communication. For many thousands of Mayan people in Guatemala, however, their dead have never been able to rest. Neither have the relatives they left behind.

Now, archaeologists and anthropologists with the FAFG work to identify the human remains, record evidence for possible trials, and return the dead home for reburial.

You can listen to the audio for part one of the series here or here. And be sure to check out Xeni's narrated tour of the FAFG's facility here.

Deepwater Sinking?

A couple months ago, Lockheed whistleblower Mike DeKort prophesied the imminent unraveling of the Coast Guard's $25-billion Deepwater modernization effort due to contractor failures. Looks like he might have been right. Defense News reports that the centerpiece Fast Response Cutter, a Northrop Grumman-led program to field around 60 patrol boats for coastal rescue, has been put on hold due to design flaws:

The Coast Guard wants to build a total of 58 FRC cutters, which are badly needed to replace worn-out 110-foot cutters now in service. A previous plan to rebuild the 110-foot cutter fleet ended after the first converted ships developed serious hull integrity problems.

Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Pascagoula, Miss., has strongly been pushing its composite design, to be built at its facility in Gulfport, Miss. The Coast Guard had earlier planned to order a prototype composite FRC cutter in 2006, but those plans are now on hold.

After two false starts, the Coast Guard "need[s] a patrol boat right away," says Rear Admiral Gary Blore, head of Deepwater. Defense News sketches some of the possibilities:

Blore noted that 19 international manufacturers with 27 different designs responded to a request for information put out in February to seek patrol boats that might meet Coast Guard requirements. None of the initial submissions met those requirements, Blore said, so the service modified some of its specifications. As a result, “five or six” of the designs show promise, Blore said.

The Coast Guard is looking for a vessel from 140 to 160 feet in length, Blore said — shorter than a number of the foreign designs. The FRC-B plan is based on a “parent-craft concept,” Blore explained, where the Coast Guard chooses a design, purchases construction rights, and builds the craft in the U.S. A similar approach, he noted, was used on the 110-foot Island-class cutters the FRC is intended to replace.

Under current plans, the Coast Guard could build 12 FRC-B cutters and 46 composite-hull FRC-A cutters, Blore said, although he allowed that those figures could change as composite craft are delivered and the program gains maturity.

-- David Axe

Final Word on YouTube Whistleblower

For weeks now, Mike DeKort, a former Lockheed Martin engineer, has been calling shenanigans on the firm for alleged ethics breaches. What started as a crude stand-up on video-sharing site YouTube has escalated into something of a media frenzy. Now the Coast Guard and Lockheed Martin are calling shenanigans right back.

Their contention is that DeKort, who hasn't worked on Deepwater in 18 months, is out of touch ... and citing outdated documents to corroborate his claims.

The lynchpin of DeKort's case is his contention that LockMart botched a program to upgrade Coast Guard patrol boats. To back up his claim, DeKort has been citing a Coast Guard Inspector General report (PDF!). But the Coast Guard says that report relies on data that are six months old. Since then, the service has addressed all the problems, according to spokeswoman Mary Elder:

The report addresses challenges relating to certification and accreditation of Deepwater [command and control] equipment, specifically on WPB 123 [patrol boats]. Subsequent to the audit, the Coast Guard has received class-wide Authority to Operate (ATO) these patrol boats while conducting secure communications. This certification followed testing by independent, third-party examiners working to standards used and endorsed by the U.S. Navy and National Security Agency.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin spokesman Troy Scully stresses that the company has investigated each of DeKort's issues -- some more than once -- and has corrected any faults. "I'm not sure what will make him happy," Scully says of DeKort.

DeKort told me what would make him happy: to put his conscience at ease, he wants to see the findings of all investigations. But Lockheed (perhaps rightly) says those are proprietary.

--David Axe

Whistleblower Picks Up Steam

Former Lockheed Martin engineer Mike DeKort, who made waves last month when he posted a video on YouTube alleging serious contractor failures on a Coast Guard patrol boat project, is back with more.

In a second post to the video-sharing site, DeKort updates viewers on his media campaign. His goal: a Congressional investigation of Lockheed Martin.

The fundamental problem, DeKort claims, is leadership, as I explain at Military.com:

DeKort had been with the company for 12 years, working on a number of different projects including training simulations, the Aegis radar system and an upgraded command center. "The only project I worked on that didn't have serious ethics issues was Aegis."

On one project, DeKort says, he was pressured to use overpriced components. His manager on the project eventually went to work for the manufacturer of the pricey parts, MediaTech. Lo and behold, Lockheed Martin has filed a lawsuit against Mediatech, alleging that it lured away Lockheed employees and mined them for company secrets.

DeKort claims he is just standing up to an epidemic of poor leadership at the nation's largest defense contractor. "It's a cultural thing," he says, adding that the only time there aren't ethics problems at Lockheed Martin is when there is good leadership at the highest levels. "Everything depends on the leadership capability and ethical standards of the person in charge."

Lockheed Martin spokesman Troy Scully contests DeKort's allegations: "Lockheed Martin has a solid program management curriculum. Our folks are very diligently trained. On top of that, we have a nationally recognized ethics program. George Mason University cited Lockheed Martin as one of best companies for ethics. There's no getting around it: Ethics is the blood that runs through our veins."

Lockheed hasn't been shy about all this DeKort stuff. In fact, it was Scully who alerted me to the second video. But it has always been the company's position that that DeKort's core complaint -- that the Coast Guard patrol boats are unsafe -- is baseless. Scully says that perhaps all the media attention has granted DeKort more legitimacy than his allegations warrant.

--David Axe

Lockheed's Bad Boats

In 2002, Lockheed Martin's Integrated Coast Guard Systems won a contract to stretch and improve as many as 49 Coast Guard patrol boats as part of the service's $24-billion Deepwater modernization effort.

Three years later, with just eight boats re-delivered, the Coast Guard called off the program, citing hull buckling and electronics problems. And it accelerated a new class of patrol boats to fill the gap, with testing beginning in the next couple years.

Something was up ... but nobody outside of the Coast Guard and Lockheed knew just what until former Lockheed engineer Michael DeKort posted a crude video to YouTube, as Defense Tech noted a couple weeks back.

In the video, DeKort alleged serious contractor misconduct on the patrol boat project. The story got some play on network TV, mostly on account of the YouTube angle, but an unsatisfied DeKort approached Defense Tech parent Military.com with detailed information including supporting documents. Read the first of our two-part expose here:

DeKort says the selection of the [Lockheed Martin] Aegis team [to work on the boats] was beginning of the program's problems. Aegis engineers are software experts; the patrol boats required little software work.

"Aegis has nothing to do with most of what we were doing on these boats," DeKort says.

That mismatch resulted in a number of contractor failures stemming from bad management, according to DeKort. He says that, in winning the contract, leaders promised to meet deadlines that were impossible at costs that were optimistically low -- around $8 million per boat. The resulting pressure encouraged corner-cutting, DeKort claims.

He says he observed three serious failures that were not corrected before the first boat re-entered Coast Guard service in March 2004:

1) Project leaders left a blind spot in the boat's security system when they omitted one of five video cameras to save money. When DeKort raised this issue with team leaders, they said the solution was "to lock the window" in the blind spot and periodically "check for broken glass" such as an intruder might leave behind.

2) In installing a new Forward-Looking Infra-Red camera, the team used a cheap cable that wasn't weatherproof, meaning it might fail in rain or high seas, depriving the boat's crew of its "eyes in the dark".

3) Perhaps most seriously, according to DeKort, the team used unshielded cables in the terminals that connect the boats to the military's secure internet. "Any foreign government monitoring these boats, from shore or from 'fishing boats', will be able to pick up all the communications from these boats. Since we have no shielded cables, these boats will emanate like an antenna.

Owing to this program failure and other complications, the Coast Guard has identified a "critical shortfall in patrol boat hours," according to Rear Admiral Gary T. Blore, Deepwater’s new program executive officer. The service is scrambling to find solutions. One proposal is to boost operating funds for the two Cyclone-class patrol boats donated by the Navy a few years back.

Tune in next week for part two of my Military.com series, where I take a look at some of the underlying causes of the patrol boat fiasco.

-- David Axe

Whisteblower Takes to YouTube

ABCNews.com is running a story on Michael De Kort, the Lockheed whisteblower that's drawing a bunch of attention. for airing his complaints about the company's shoddy Coast Guard work for on YouTube. The network website was silly enough to quote yours truly about the subject.

Noah Shac[h]tman, editor-in-chief of noahshachtman.com, which monitors military happenings both at home and abroad, says it's necessary to ensure the public's ability to blow the whistle.

"I think it's never been easier for people to call B.S. on the shenanigans of their employers or their government," said Shachtman. "Whether it's soldiers from Abu Graib slipping out pictures and getting them to the press, or whether we're talking about bloggers reporting from the front lines. Digital media has really made it incredibly easy for people who want to get their message out and bring questionable practices to light."

Shachtman says there are many examples of these kinds of defense contract scandals -- though he says he's unsure if this is one of those cases. He says the promise of digital media is fulfilled when people like Michael De Kort can be heard.

"There are plenty of honest people working at the nation's defense contractors and there are a lot of very hard working, very smart people," Shac[h]tman said. "Unfortunately, when there are abuses, it can be awfully difficult for someone to penetrate the corporate walls and the government walls that surround them."

Tell that to Michael De Kort -- if you can catch him in-between interviews.

"They [the people] need to know the level of incompetence and the decisions that were being made," De Kort said. "Your ethics -- especially after 9/11 -- cannot be decisions of convenience -- they can't be decisions of economics."

TXT 4 RNC PRTST

The most common of personal electronics -- the mobile phone -- is becoming a tool of choice for political organizers. And when activists by the thousands gather in New York City to protest at the Republican National Convention, cell phones will get their most intense workout yet as activist instruments.

Mobile-engaged masses don't just connect differently; they act differently too. Short-messaging system (SMS) alerts over cell phones have enabled demonstrators to shift tactics, deploy resources and respond to the police, just about instantly.

Law enforcement officials concede they're having trouble keeping up with these fast-moving, cell-connected groups.

"Now, they can actually coordinate tactics, create a feint. They'll start a demonstration in one place to draw the police, while their true objective is in another," said Charles "Sid" Heal, a crowd-control specialist and 29-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

"There's nothing we can do right now to counter them," Heal said. "They're in a digital age, and we're still in analog."

There's more in my Chicago Tribune story.

PROF LEADS "DARPA OF DISSENT"

The place didn't feel like a radical's den; there were too many toys lying around. It didn't look like an artist's studio; the wipe board was filled with schematics, not sketches. And it sure didn't seem like an engineer's lab -- especially not with the impossibly cute, white-furred bunny gnawing at the cables. But the loft in Manhattan's West Village was a bit of all three, really: the home to controversial art and engineering professor Natalie Jeremijenko.

For more than a decade, Jeremijenko and her collective of tinkerers and artistes, the Bureau of Inverse Technology, have been using technology to explore the limits of social and environmental issues, from suicide to toxic skies. She's won slots at top universities, like Yale and Stanford, and at prestigious art centers, like the Whitney Museum, for the work. But starting this weekend, the machines put together here by Jeremijenko and her cohorts may get their biggest stage yet, by giving a guerrilla geek's edge to the protests swirling around the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Months ago, it became clear that the RNC counter-demonstrations were going digital. But most of the gadgetry involved was household stuff -- text messages to report cops' whereabouts, or web pages to arrange housing. Jeremijenko and her group have gone beyond that, hand-crafting devices meant to level, just a bit, law enforcement's technology advantage over activists.

Their devices include a 10-foot balloon, for counting crowds; a set of pirate transmitters, for taking over local radio stations; and 1,400 face masks that measure the level of pollution in the Manhattan air. Think of the group as a kind of Darpa of dissent -- with Jeremijenko's loft as the headquarters.

Check out my other article at Wired News today for more.

HACKERS TAKE AIM AT RNC

Protesters have been targeting government and corporate websites for years. But when online activists strike at Republican domains during the G.O.P.'s convention later this month, the digital demonstrations might turn out to be more than symbolic, for once.

In the past, activists have been able to shut down the website of, say, the World Economic Forum for a few hours. But the impact of such a takedown was nebulous at best: It's hard to argue the organization really suffered from a few-hour lag in posting its press releases online.

In this year's presidential race, however, campaign websites have moved beyond the margins. During John Kerry's acceptance speech in Boston last month, for example, his website was visited by 50,000 people an hour, according to ComScore Networks, the online traffic-measuring firm. That's a droplet compared to the millions who'll watch the convention on TV. But taking down a campaign website would nevertheless remove a critical tool for reaching the public -- and likely generate a slew of stories in the mainstream media about the crash.

So it's no surprise that hardened electronic activists are planning to jam up the servers of georgewbush.com, rnc.org, and related websites, once the Republican National Convention gets underway on August 29.

"We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in," said CrimethInc, a member of the so-called Black Hat Hackers Bloc.

My Wired News article has details.

THERE'S MORE: Salon's Michelle Goldberg has a super story today on how radical protesters' tactics could backfire -- and cost John Kerry the election.

AND MORE: Steve Gilliard says Michelle is full of it.

Goldberg is worried about a bunch of halfwits who the cops have loudly announced that they are watching.

The problem with the Chicago analogy is multiple, but let's start with the police riot and end with the disorder in the hall. The anarchists are kids who will quickly learn that if the NYPD can handle St. Patrick's Day and the Puerto Rican Day parade where everyone over the age of 16 is drunk, their little street theater will pose no challenge.

But I think she needs to harp on the anarcho-kiddies. Get the GOP nice and frightened of them, worried about their antics.

Why?

Because the real protests, the ones that get people, including cops and firemen into the streets will be far different affairs. I don't get why she is so obsessed with some loud talking white boys from Williamsburg, who have neither influence nor support, while ignoring the far more serious protests on tap. If I was Rove, I would worry about the big union protests, not the anarcho-antics.

AND MORE: In my article today, I make reference to a recent hacker conference session promising to teach folks how "to infiltrate organizations like the RNC." Defense Tech reader CL says that was wrong. "The HOPE conference that you referred to in your article does not endorse morons such as these 'Black Hat Hackers.' It is, in fact, people like them who give hackers a bad name. It's offensive that you refer to that gathering in such a detrimental way only to perpetuate the hysteria that comes with the word 'hacker.'"