Nexus23 Labs - IBM 5100

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- The wave of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East that have overturned three governments in the past year have prompted the U.S. government to begin developing guidelines for culling intelligence from social media networks, a top Homeland Security official said Monday.

Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity.

"We're still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source," she said. "How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?"

Wagner said the department is establishing guidelines on gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes. Wagner says those protocols are being developed under strict laws meant to prevent spying on U.S. citizens and protect privacy, including rules dictating the length of time the information can be stored and differences between domestic and international surveillance.

Wagner said the Homeland Security department, established after the 9/11 attacks, is not actively monitoring any social networks. But when the department receives information about a potential threat, contractors are then asked to look for certain references within "open source" information, which is available to anyone on the Internet.

The challenge, she said, is to develop guidelines for collecting and analyzing information so that it provides law enforcement officials with meaningful intelligence.

"I can post anything on Facebook, is that valid? If 20 people are tweeting the same thing, then maybe that is valid," she said. "There are just a lot of questions that we are sort of struggling with because it's a newly emerging (issue)."

Wagner was in Colorado Springs to deliver a speech at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense, a conference that included defense contractors and the military.

Aside from discussing the use of technology in unrest that has led to regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, she delivered a speech that addressed the way the department operates, saying that its crucial elements include a nationwide network of 72 fusion centers that gather and analyze reports of suspicious activity, a new National Terrorism Advisory System that replaces the color coded alert system with one that provides more information about a threat, and a "See Something, Say Something" campaign that encourages citizens to report suspicious activity.

She also said another key program involves training hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers across the country in filling out suspicious activity reports.

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According to Bob Dubke, the second engineer on IBM's 5100 team in Rochester

(who now co-owns a locally-based company called eXport Ventures Corp.

and also works for Edina Realty), that secret function was his contribution to the design of the computer.

The function, which IBM suppressed because of worries about how their competition might use it,

was an interface between the assembly code surrounding the computer's ROM exterior,

and the 360 emulator hidden beneath it. (IBM declined to comment for this story.)

The 5100's emulator gave programmers access to the functions of the monstrous,

and much less portable machines, that IBM had produced during the 1960s.

An imprint of a hook on the outside of the 5100 symbolized the ability

of Dubke's interface to drop into what Titor called "legacy code,"

and scoop out any necessary operating instructions.

A hook is an appropriate symbol for Titor's story.

His posts ended in March 2001, after his supposed return to the future.

In the wake of his disappearance,

the claims he'd made about the 5100 became the starting point

from which all manner of Internet kooks conducted searches for proof of his claims.

Unlike his vague predictions of future doom,

the information he'd relayed about the 5100 was concrete,

and filled with statements that readers could research. It's a surprise,

then, that Dubke hadn't heard about the Titor debacle until we contacted him in July.

Period documentation Dubke provided calls the computer a "dramatic step forward,"

and reveals that the 5100 team were justifiably excited about their project's release.

According to Dubke, they'd been set free from bureaucratic controls,

and so had worked smoothly and efficiently on the 5100's design.

The end result was a computer that, though antiquated in comparison to current technology,

was an engineering marvel. Bulky but functional. When Dubke first heard about John Titor,

his main question was not of whether John Titor was a time traveler,

("I'm not a ï¿½Star Trek' watcher," he says, "or into building fantasies")

but of who among his team had the right sense of humor

to orchestrate the furor created by Titor's posts.

"Somebody is trying to tickle somebody else," Dubke says.

In response to our inquiries, he mentally reviewed the list of engineers

with whom he'd spent turbulent and fun times at IBM.

One candidate who emerged, a man with a "caustic" sense of humor, seemed to Dubke to be the most likely jokester.

However, as he reviewed Titor's posts, he dismissed them as being "too simple"

to be the product of any of his friends, and his eyes stumbled over the sight of the phrase "legacy code,"

which, he says, no members of the 5100 team would ever use.

He concludes that Titor's 5100 material was merely "derived from information available on the Internet."