User talk:George Swan/sandbox/Chatter (signals intelligence)

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	I was the sole author of this version.
	George Swan 05:40, 21 November 2007

Edits

First, it's not "war on terror". There is a link there, which explains where the term is used literally. While I happen to consider the term asinine as defined by the Bush Administration, putting it in quotes is approximately equivalent to preceding it with a deprecating but information-free phrase such as so-called.

Second, the sources quoted are journalistic impressions of what, I suspect, politicians said about intelligence. In my experience with signals intelligence, "chatter" might be used casually between a few analysts, but, as a metric in traffic analysis, is simply not what an intelligence professional would say. Actual reports are more likely to use graphic or statistical impressions of changes in traffic patterns, and the all-source intelligence analysts will simply refer to SIGINT, COMINT, or perhaps a code word for a particular source.

This article links to an article on traffic analysis, which has a link from SIGINT#Traffic analysis but really doesn't provide more information in a systematic way. I would be delighted if there were an extensive article on the SIGINT discipline of traffic analysis, rather than what seems to be a rephrasing, in informal language, of what is in the SIGINT article.

There is little, if anything here, of substance that isn't already in less journalistic detail elsewhere. I recognize it does get in some little comments about the war on terror and Algerian 6, and yes, I do consider that non-neutral. Rather than go journalistic, link the Algerian 6 article, if that is notable, to SIGINT#traffic analysis. The term "chatter" could be added to the SIGINT article as a journalistic/political term. Show me some evidence that chatter is routinely used by anyone in the SIGINT community, especially in reports, and I'll reconsider my opinion. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

You are the subject field expert. You are completely authorized to nix the use of the term "war on terror". I no longer use it here, since you made your opinion clear last June. But I wrote the passage you are complaining about a year ago.

Could you explain your concern over the sources used here more fully? Lots of articles here use newspaper articles. I am not aware of any other citizens being concerned over using newspaper articles as sources. Could you please clarify whether you are concerned over the use of any newspaper source, anywhere?

Finally, I am very concerned over your repeated challenges to my personal integrity. I've asked you to stop. Is there any point to making another request for you to stop? George Swan 03:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)