Uncle Sam Might Want You…
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Richard Gardner | Thursday, April 5, 2007 |
If you are a retired DoD employee (civilian or military) for Project Minerva, not that I’m sure what Project Minerva is (don’t bother with the link, all you get is a DoD emblem and a login). Google is no help as this is not the PS2 videogame Gamespy: Project Minerva, nor “Minerva is a modular portal derived from phpBB 3.0.x.,” nor something out of the science fiction novels of James P. Hogan.
I logged into the Defense Finance and Accounting System Mypay to get my 1099R (= W-2 for retirees) so I could do my taxes. Under the welcome screen was this statement
If you are a U.S. citizen living in a foreign country and would like to help protect America, please click here.
Sounds interesting. So I clicked (OK, I’m not living in a foreign country).
We need volunteers.
In a variety of situations, we have relied on U.S. citizens abroad to assist the Department of Defense (DoD). This is a voluntary program in which you can identify under secure conditions your willingness to assist the DoD. If you are willing to provide information in times of crises or to support the Global War on Terrorism and consent to future contact by representatives of the DoD, please complete the following questionnaire.
Then a relatively standard questionnaire of name and contact information.
Googling on Project Minerva gave me the PS2 game above, and similar nonsense. But looking at the boilerplate gave much more info
The Privacy & Security notice states (besides the usual stuff)
1. This website is provided to collect volunteer information of actual, apparent, or potential use for the Department of Defense.
2. For site management, information is collected to support the administration, operation, and management of the Department of Defense Expatriate Contact Program. This information will be used to support the Department of Defense and other Federal agencies.
So Project Minerva is the Department of Defense Expatriate Contact Program, whatever that is, but slightly more google-able, and I find that Akamitech (a large database company) is the database contractor and find that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is behind this with a target of
Retired Department of Defense military and civilian personnel living abroad who are willing to volunteer information of actual, apparent or potential use for the Department of Defense.
I guess my home of the so-called Peoples Republic of Cascadia isn’t quite “living abroad” so I can’t help out. And I still don’t know if they are looking for James Bonds, safe houses, spies, or someone to dog sit.
There were no disclosure warnings on any of the websites I visited, though they were behind a passworded pay section.
About the Author: A “retired” Navy Submarine Officer with military policy, arms control, and budgeting experience, he served for 6 years on the Joint staffs of US Strategic Command (Strategy & Policy) and the Iceland Defense Force. On the Navy Staff at the Pentagon, he was the Action Officer & Program Sponsor for the SSGN Project and Navy Ballistic Missile Programs. He has a BS in Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. He made a few guest posts OTB starting in January 2004 covering special events and has made frequent contributions since.
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That's a dot com. Maybe the civilian-based open source intelligence community is really coming together, or it was an aborted April Fool's joke without a punchline.
Sounds similar to the program the CIA had at one time to interview visitors to Soviet Bloc countries.
Perhaps they are getting addresses that will put a fellow up for a couple of nights after the democrats take over and decide that armies are the cause of war and must be banned from the US.
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