Filling those iPods, intelligence edition (part II)

It’s time again to revisit the playlists as we head into the holidays, spending longer and longer in traffic – or taking those long trips to family and friends in the flyover country or other unknown places outside of the Beltway. We received such strong positive feedback on our first set of resource pointers that we believe our readers might enjoy another set of a few of our favourites. And after all, we all do have to do our bit to contribute to the exaflood's use of bandwidth.

Not all of the links we point out are easily captured in podcast form. Some require a bit of digital witchery to transform into something useable on the road. However, given the dearth of material of interest to the intelligence professional, we think that it is often worth the effort to get some of this material into portable form. And of course, for those unwilling or unable to spend the time (even if it becomes an automated background processing task with only a little experience), there is always the holiday need for some background listening that isn’t the same inevitable themed music that has been playing since Thanksgiving when assembling decorations, toys, and other tasks which engage the hands but not the mind.

• Federal Law Enforcement Training Center podcasts – For those working homeland security or law enforcement intelligence accounts, the Legal Division at FLETC has prepared an excellent series of podcasts of their lectures on a diverse set of issues including search and seizure, FISA, GPS tracking, covert entry warrants, military cases, and the use of force continuum. (Helpfully pointed out by the conspirators at Volokh).

• Center for Strategic and International Studies events – The well known think tank offers audio and video from a number of its recent forums, including presentations by some very interesting foreign speakers as well as round table discussions across the spectrum of global issues.

• Centre for Counterintelligence & Security Studies – These podcasts run the full gamut from short promotional pieces pitching this organization’s classes to longer interviews of notable names, along with some whimsy in the discussion of fiction. We highly recommend the speech given by the Soviet-era defector Yuri Nosenko – it is a quite fascinating look into the thinking of the KGB’s 2nd Chief Directorate, along with the troubled history of a few famous cases, including the speakers’ own treatment by James Jesus Angelton.

• Singularity Summit 2007 – For those interested in the concept of singularity, we highly recommend the audio tracks from this conference that grapples with the potential implications of rapid technology acceleration. For those unfamiliar with the background, the original thinker behind the idea helpfully provides insight here, and you may also listen to an earlier presentation of his from the Ted conference (which just so happens to offer another set of quite enjoyable audio presentations, though on a bit broader range of topics.)

• National Institutes of Health videocasts – The NIH is one of those frequently overlooked repositories of exceptionally valuable expertise and learning that intelligence professionals would be well advised to tap into. They offer a number of medically related lectures and courses which have great utility to those serving homeland security, counterproliferation, or counterterrorism accounts (in addition to items of interest to the medical intelligence professionals out there.)

We have also been remiss in not previously mentioning the rather quite recent entry to the blogging scene of one of Mercyhurst College’s intelligence studies professors at the Sources and Methods blog. Among other posts, the gentleman mentions a list of useful Library of Congress webcasts that may be of interest, covering a good range of topics.

We do hope these help our readers to more enjoyably pass the time spent in holiday gridlock or escaping the Beltway, since we doubt that we shall be offering any podcasts of our own any time in the foreseeable future.