Appel leads JIE, Brennan apologizes, IG dings NOAA and more

DOD taps Appel for JIE

On July 31, the Pentagon named two top officials to serve in the White House Military Office and the Defense Department's CIO office.

Karin Appel is now director of the DOD CIO's Joint Information Environment implementation. She was previously the Joint Chiefs of Staff J-6 office's liaison to DOD CIO.

Dabney Kern, a former vice president at CACI International, will be the White House Military Office's director of policy, plans and requirements. The office overseas military operations aboard Air Force One, among other programs.

Both positions are part of the Senior Executive Service, whose members serve in leadership positions that link presidential appointees with the rest of the federal workforce.

Brennan sorry for perusing panel's computers

CIA Director John Brennan has apologized to the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for his agency's infiltration of computers used by committee staffers, according to multiple news reports.

The move is an about-face from previous denials that the CIA accessed computers used by the committee to research a forthcoming report on the agency's interrogation methods.

Brennan apologized to Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) in a private briefing on July 29, McClatchy reported.

"The director is committed to correcting any shortcomings related to this matter, and to that end, he is commissioning an Accountability Board at CIA, which will be chaired by former senator and [former intelligence committee] member Evan Bayh," CIA spokesman Dean Boyd told FCW. "This board will review the [inspector general's] report, conduct interviews as needed and provide the director with recommendations that, depending on its findings, could include potential disciplinary measures and/or steps to address systemic issues."

NOAA audit dings BYOD

An audit by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's inspector general revealed a bring-your-own-device problem that jeopardized NOAA's information systems, GovInfoSecurity.com reports. And the device that gave NOAA's incident response team headaches wasn't a smartphone or tablet but an old-fashioned personal computer.

Michael Devany, deputy undersecretary for operations at the Commerce Department, acknowledged that the incident occurred but said the IG is exaggerating the potential risk.

NGA plans to turn 2D images into 3D

Defense Systems reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is seeking research on existing capabilities for automatically deriving geo-referenced 3D point clouds from commercial satellite imagery.

Point clouds are used in geographic information systems to make digital elevation models of terrain or generate 3D models of urban areas.

At a minimum, NGA wants a fully automated system that could take at least two commercial satellite images and output a 3D point cloud capable of showing multiple elevations at a single location.