SAIC
The Washington Note

…after more than six years, Trailblazer is not up and running. NSA failed to deliver the system. Today, NSA lacks a system to comprehensively evaluate all the communications collected by its vast networks. According to the article, the NSA Inspector General reported in 2003, €œinadequate management and oversight€ of private contractors and overpayment for the work that was done;
3. cancelled a separate and less-expensive program, Thinthread which a Pentagon report in 2004 found to be more promising than Trailblazer and could be put to use faster;
4. hired William Black Jr. from SAIC in 2000 to be the Deputy Director of NSA. San Diego based SAIC, won the contract for Trailblazer according to a second Baltimore Sun Article

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne…..1259.story
and by 2002, Black was overseeing Trailblazer. According to the article, €œTwo other top NSA managers who worked on Trailblazer – Hal Smith and Sam Visner – also left the spy agency for jobs at SAIC. There, Smith worked on Trailblazer and the FBI’s Virtual Case File program,€€ .

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Little-known contractor has close ties with staff of NSA

As SAIC has grown, it has forged close ties to several key defense and intelligence agencies, including the NSA. Among those who have served on SAIC’s board of directors are former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Directors John M. Deutch and Robert M. Gates; and former Defense Secretaries Melvin R. Laird and William J. Perry.

The door swings so regularly between the NSA and SAIC that the company has earned the nickname “NSA West” inside the intelligence community.

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Chapter Eight

..This attractive but simplistic vision of the technology overlooks an important fact: those individuals and organizations in power do not particularly want to lose their power, and will go to great efforts to adapt any new technology to their own needs. They will also, quite naturally, attempt to undermine any technology they consider to be a threat to their own interests.

For example, the question of who controls the US domain name space is of great concern to online activists. Despite the common assumption that the Internet is highly decentralized in structure, all top-level domain names {24} in the United States are currently controlled by a single organization – the InterNIC. Formerly administered by the National Science Foundation, (NSF) an independent US government agency, the InterNIC is now run by two private corporations under contract to the NSF. One of these companies is AT&T, the telecom giant, and the other is a company called Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI). In mid 1995 NSI was acquired by Scientific Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a US $2 billion firm that specializes in military, police and government intelligence contracts. And, as Stephen Pizzo points out…

…This highly esoteric technical issue serves to undermine the notion that the Internet is inherently democratic and decentralized, because control over name and IP number space translates directly to control over access to the system as a whole. Anyone can pay a commercial provider for network access in order to plug a computer into the Internet, but unless that computer’s address is recognized by the central name authorities for their namespace then nobody will be able to find it. As Gordon Cook notes: “It is beginning to appear that, the more the Internet increases in size, the faster that power flows upwards into the hands of a few who, since they are both operators and rule makers for the commercial Internet, would find themselves singled out for accusations of blatant conflict of interest in most other situations.” (Cook, 1996.) Some companies have tried to set up alternative name registries to the InterNIC and national name registrar monopolies, but whether such ventures will succeed remains to be seen….

The last reference was from ten years ago and their control is tightening still. NSA has the patents for many different net technologies including “geo-locating” from simple web searches and pafe access. Control of the DNS system/servers/routers can enable control and monitoring of virtually all traffic and communication. I don’t trust ‘em at all.

Yes, I saw Feingold, Olympia Snowe, and Lieberman on C-SPAN a couple of weeks ago promoting their certain-to-pass reinstatement of the Pentagon IG. Snowe was looking happy as a clam, gently needling Lieberman (who’d just the day before made his first threat to bolt at some point) by calling it “the first tri-partisan amendment of the new congress.”

Thanks very much for this roundup, Matt.

GREAT work again matt! keep at it, this is critically important stuff

Hello, Mr. Greenwald, thanks for your work as well, and for carrying the banner so well in your conversations with Keith Olbermann on Countdown. Your appearances there give me hope.

punaise @ 36

scarecrow @ 35

Pelosi for President 2007

some funny pix there

Yes. But the joke is on us.

sure, but you can’t tell me you didn’t get a chuckle from seeing W in an orange jumpsuit by George Zimmer.

I like the Vanna pic.

Love this link and just did some Xmas stocking stuffer shopping my grown youngsters will love including Pelosi for President 2007 buttons, bumperstickers & tees.

kirk murphy @ 9

Matt O – thanks for your work!

Matt Ortega – thanks for your work!

Good to meet you both ;)

Yeah, I figured since most of the people who link to me mention me by full name anyhow, might as well go with it.

I figured since Daniel was back, you’d use your own name.

Apologies for the completely lame title. I finished late last night and drew a blank since a number of stories are covered here.

So around 2-3am or so, I just said, “screw it” and decided to go with a topical term here at FDL: Polonium-210.

Matt O.!

Thanks for keeping at Gates. California constituents who want Senator Feinstein to ask Gates tough questions (she seems inclined to) can contact her here. Her frontyard presser on 11/8 sounded like she remembers Iran/Contra.

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Who’s Next?
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PS Great title; not a Walcott reference, but I bet TRex will be pleased to see you on the Polonium-210 skate.