Creator, Blogs of War
John W. Little is the creator of Blogs of War and the host of the Covert Contact national security podcast. Blogs of War, created in 2002, gained international attention when CNN acknowledged that in its coverage of the 2003 Iraq War it sometimes beat traditional sources with war news. John continues to leverage decades of internet experience (pre-dating the web) and a global network of contacts to mine, analyze, aggregate, and surface open source information with an eye towards identifying important trends at their origin.
John’s projects and analysis, on topics ranging from terrorist use of social media to the impact of encryption on intelligence collection and law enforcement, have received global coverage from news organizations including CNN, BBC, CBS News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Fast Company, Time Magazine, and PBS Newshour. Blogs of War “…pulls from hundreds of political, security and intelligence sources to find and tweet the nuggets its followers don’t necessarily know they need to know.” – TIME
His analysis of Tor, and its limitations (Tor and the Illusion of Anonymity), was somewhat unexpectedly cited in United States v. Matish and continues to have relevance today.