With the attack on the Maersk Alabama, a U.S.-operated cargo vessel, our attention once again turns to pirates operating in and around Somalia. With Somali pirates demonstrating an amazing ability to collaborate, we should be concerned about the lack of effective US and international cooperation. It’s not as if we haven’t put resources out there; NATO, the European Union, and the United States have all placed an incredible amount of assets in the region. But, we have failed when it comes to effectively collaborating across the broader maritime community and delivering real solutions.

Following the recent attack we’ve heard from dozens of analysts, bloggers and pundits who each respond with different ideas on how to address the issue. With recommendations including aggressive action against the pirates, exclusion zones and “sons of Iraq” models, a return to convoys, and more, we haven’t seen much discussion around the “information” problem. And yet, information could be a key enabler of our counter-piracy strategy. While criminals and pirates have effectively used a mix of low-tech and high-tech solutions to collaborate and target shipping, the maritime and national security communities have largely ignored their information strengths. Given the amount of data available and the large community of interest, we should launch a program to expose our information and develop a crowdsourced counter-piracy campaign.

Crowdsourcing conforms to existing US strategy and policy - it’s time we take action and start working together.

Ignoring Information Superiority

Insurgents and Somali pirates are using mobile phones, text messages, informants, and GPS to coordinate their attacks. Many sources contend that the pirates even use VHF radios and informants at the Port Authority to ambush ships. Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan branch of the East African Seafarers’ Association, believes the pirates are using the AIS to plan and coordinate their attacks:

Mwangura said he believed the pirates were able to avoid navy patrols and target ships that could deliver juicy ransoms by using automatic identification system (AIS) technology, a system used by ships and vessel traffic services to track and identify ships. “We think they are using AIS to monitor ships … they can find out if the owner is rich or poor, find out what the ship is carrying and the nationality of the crew,” he said. “They don’t go out blindly.”

While a small group of well funded criminals leverage a mix of mobile communications, SIGINT and HUMINT, the community of mariners and naval defense forces struggle to collaborate and truly leverage information to their advantage. Recognizing the communication and collaboration problem, SPAWAR San Diego produced a detailed paper on the technical communication challenges of maritime collaboration “Networking the Global Maritime Partnership” stating:

One of the biggest challenges to instantiating an effective global maritime partnership is technical - how do the navies of disparate nations that desire to operate together at sea obtain the requisite…systems that will enable them to truly “network” and make the global maritime partnership a reality. Unless or until the technical challenges to networking navies at sea are addressed by the U.S. Navy and by likely coalition navies, the dream of a global maritime partnership will never be achieved.

SPAWAR is absolutely correct in one key respect: we can’t have a maritime partnership without a network. But the “technical challenge” at hand doesn’t require years or billions of dollars. The “network” as well as the tools and data already exist. Whether it’s Google Earth, internet chat, enterprise mashups or Twitter we have a number of possible tools at hand.

If it’s not a “technical challenge”, perhaps it’s our strategy or policy that’s flawed? Actually no, in fact the United States has already recognized the strategic importance of collaboration across the community. In December of 2008, The National Security Council published the Countering Piracy off the Horn of Africa: Partnership & Action Plan[.pdf]. In the text below, the US clearly states that we must lead and support efforts to work together across the community:

This Plan implements the National Strategy for Maritime Security (September 2005)[.pdf] and the Policy for the Repression of Piracy and other Criminal Acts of Violence at Sea (June 2007) as applied to piracy off the Horn of Africa. The Strategy affirms the vital national interest of the United States in maritime security, and recognizes that nations have a common interest in achieving two complementary objectives: to facilitate the vibrant maritime commerce that underpins economic security, and to protect against ocean-related criminal and dangerous acts, including piracy. Our Policy provides that we shall “[c]ontinue to lead and support international efforts to repress piracy . . . and urge other states to take decisive action both individually and through international efforts.” Accordingly, this Plan seeks to involve all nations, international organizations, industry, and other entities that have an interest in maritime security to take steps to repress piracy off the Horn of Africa.

The U.S. objective is to repress this piracy as effectively as possible in the interests of the global economy, freedom of navigation, Somalia, and the regional states. — Moreover, achieving this objective will require cooperation, coordination, and integration among military, law enforcement, judicial, diplomatic, and commercial interests in and beyond the affected region.

Emerging Solutions

The community already collects a large body of information relavent to the piracy problem and several of these organizations provide limited amounts of information and analysis through their websites.

These groups serve up very useful information such as TF 150’s “Counter Piracy Operations off Somalia”[.ppt] and UNOSAT’s detailed maps of Somali pirate activity. While the information from these organizations is useful, it is largely static and fails to leverage the network effect of the broader community.

but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. A recent Bloomberg article reveals that the EU, US and mariners have used internet chat to collaborate and share information. In a complimentary move, the International Chamber of Commerce maintains a Live Piracy Map with historical and real-time visualizations of piracy activity worldwide. And within the Google Earth Community, a private user, “Expedition”, created an extremely detailed map of piracy activity and infrastructure. These actions point to the future and hint at the possibility of information superiority by exposing data and tools to the wider community.

Adopt Crowdsourcing for Information Superiority

While Captain John Konrad of gCaptain argues for the use of a “Twitter clone” to collect and distribute information to the community, this is only the first step in collaborating. We agree with Captain Konrad’s but we also believe a more comprehensive strategy is in order. The US, EU, NATO and other organizations should actively work together to free their unclassified data and make it accessible to the public. In parallel, the US should take a lead role in deploying an open platform and tools that allow the entire community to contribute and collaborate.

While we are not offering a specific approach, we hope the US and broader community will adopt crowdsourcing as a key strategy to achieve information superiority in the fight against pirates. For a great look at crowdsourcing visit BuildingPeace’s article on “Crowdsourcing Security”. An excerpt of this article is below:

The book Wikinomics begins with a story about Rob McEwen, CEO of Goldcorp Inc. In 1999 the small goldmining firm was threatened by a host of problems; if it did not find substantial new gold deposits, its mine would likely close and bring the company down. The company’s geologists had reason to believe their property was brimming with further gold deposits–up to thirty times their current production–but the geologists struggled to provide specifics. The company was at an impasse.

In March of 2000, McEwan did something that blew apart traditional business models and saved his company: he put all his company’s proprietary geological data on the Internet for public viewing and announced the “Goldcorp Challenge” with $575,000 of prize money for locating new gold deposits. He crowdsourced the problem to the public.

The authors write, “Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding in to Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. ‘We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in thh industry,’ says McEwen.”

The authors conclude, “Today Goldcorp is reaping the fruits of its open source approach to exploration. Not only did the contest yield copious quantities of gold, it catapulted his underperforming $100 million company into a $9 billion juggernaut while transforming a backward mining site in Northern Ontario into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry.


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