News

Global Intelligence Forum Golden Candle Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 17 May 1998

Global Intelligence Forum-the international gathering of spies and intelligence analysts-announces five Golden Candle Award recipients for 1998-award ceremonies 18 May at 0830

Mr. Robert D. Steele and Dr. Mark Lowenthal, OSS Inc. partners and experienced international intelligence professionals, today announced the five recipients of the annual international Golden Candle Award. The Award was established in 1992 to recognize individuals and organizations with superior understanding of open sources, systems, and services such as to contribute significantly to the revitalization of the global all-source intelligence community largely reliant on spies and satellites but not on schoolboys and open sources.

Past individual winners have included Dr. Stevan Dedijer, founder of the discipline of business intelligence and behind-the-lines member of the original Office of Strategic Services; Dr. Douglas Englebart, inventor of the mouse, computer graphics, hyperlinks, and other vital analysis tools; Mr. Rop Gonnggrijp, leader of the European hacker community known as Hac-tic; Dr. Loch Johnson, dean of the intelligence reform movement; Mr. Roger Karraker, author of the seminal work on "Highways of the Mind" as published in the Whole Earth Review; Dr. Ross Stapleton-Gray, CIA analyst described by the NSF as one of America's leading cybernauts; Mr. Winn Schwartau, author of INFORMATION WARFARE: Chaos on the Information Superhighway; and Dr. Vipin Gupta with Mr. Frank Pabian, for their pathfinding work on using commercial imagery to track Indian nuclear test activities.

Organizational winners have included government intelligence organizations with open minds toward change, such as the J-2 of the Special Operations Command; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the U.S. Army's PATHFINDER project; the Department of Justice Center for Missing & Exploited Children; the EUROPOL Drug Unit; the Swedish Military Intelligence & Security Directorate; the Italian Servizio Centrale di Investigazione sulla Criminilata Organizzata (SCICO); the Ministry of the Interior in The Netherlands; the Metropolitan Police of London; the Belgian Gendarme; and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

In the private sector, only a few companies have qualified for this special award. They include Jane'' Information Group, Oxford Analytica, Eastview Publications, LEXIS-NEXIS, the Institute for Scientific Information, SPOT Image Corporation, Burwell Associates, and i2 Ltd..

This year, the citations read:

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD

Awarded to Mr. Harry Collier, founding and Managing Director of Infonortics Ltd.; founder of the Association for Global Strategic Information; and author of many distinguished publications, the most recent of which is the electronic publishing maze: strategies in the electronic publishing industry. Mr. Collier has contributed significantly to the concurrent development of knowledge in the open source intelligence community, the business intelligence community, and the information industry.

Awarded to Dr. Mark Maybury, for his vision of web-based analytic tools; his contribution toward distributive, collaborative open source exploitation; his leadership of MITRE's Open Source Processing Research Initiative (OSPRI); his technical leadership in computational linguistics and intelligent interfaces, and his contributions to the integration of innovative news on demand, machine translation, web summarization, and content visualization technologies.

Awarded to Mr. Tom Will, for his balanced approach to developing a defense open source information capability able to significantly enhance defense all-source intelligence collection management and defense all-source intelligence production. In addition, as steward for selected elements of the national open source program, including training, Mr. Will has been singled out for recognition as the most accomplished open source manager in the U.S. government.

Awarded to the national intelligence community of South Africa, including the foreign, clandestine, military, and domestic intelligence elements, in recognition of their extraordinary accomplishments during the period of reconciliation. This community has simultaneously become fully integrated; embarked on an ambitious program of revitalization including a community-wide consideration of the utility of open sources & methods; and contributed significantly to new ideas in support of the African renaissance.

Awarded to Autometric, Inc., in recognition of its broad program to fully integrate all sources of commercial multi-spectral imagery into a larger all-source national imagery collection and production architecture, while simultaneously leading the industry in setting new benchmarks in advanced visualization, multi-source imagery exploitation, and spatial decision-support systems development.

The recipients will be presented with their award at 0830 Monday 18 May 1998, at the Marriott Tysons's Corner Hotel. Ample press passes are available. A copy of the complete program for the event is available at www.oss.net under Events/OSS '98, or by calling the OSS Inc. conference office at (703) 506-3743. Interviews for TV and print media readily arranged Monday. The hotel telephone number is (703) 734-3200. It is located at the intersection of 495 and Route 7 (Leesburg Pike).

Contact: Mr. Edward Ostentoe or Capt William Horn USN (Ret) at (703) 506-3743. After the event, contact Mr. Robert Steele, OSS Inc., at (703) 242-1700 or bear@oss.net. Complete information about OSS Inc. and its international activities is available at www.oss.net.


Robert D. Steele, President
OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Inc.
4350 Fair Lakes Court, Fairfax, VA 22033 USA
Voice: (703) 242-1700 -- Facsimile: (703) 242-1711
Internet Info: bear@oss.net, Web: www.oss.net