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IBM Or Amazon: Whom Will The CIA Choose?
Over the weekend we pointed out one of the more disturbing facets of the Snowden espionage affair: the covert, if massive (and very lucrative) symbiosis between private companies, who have explicitly opened up all private client data contrary to privacy disclosures, and a secretly uber-inquisitive government. We asked: "The reality is that while the NSA, which is a public entity through and through, is allowed and expected to do whatever its superiors tell it (i.e., the White House), how does one justify the complete betrayal of their customers by private corporations such as Verizon and AT&T? This may be the most insidious and toxic symbiosis between the public and private sector in the recent past." But while the quid was finally made public (if known by many long ago), the quo wasn't quite clear. It now is - the answer, as as always, is money. And not just any money, but in this specific case taxpayer money paid to either Google or Amazon by none other than the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA for short. Lots of it.
WSJ closes the full circle on the private information-for-taxpayer cash circle:
The battle between International Business Machines Corp. IBM and Amazon.com Inc. over a $600 million contract to set up a cloud-computing system for the Central Intelligence Agency shows the growing importance of intelligence-agency business for technology companies.
It also shows in whose pocket US corporations truly are, and why when Uncle Big Brother says jump (and hand me over all the data), the IBMs and Amazons of the world are delighted to ask how high.
The background story is well known: "The competition comes amid extraordinary disclosures of secret government-surveillance programs and shows that even in the rarified world of intelligence agencies, companies selling Internet-based cloud-computing services—like Amazon—are challenging the position of traditional technology vendors."
There are many companies suckling on contracts paid for by the government's taxpayer dollar:
Which is why everyone else wants in on a piece of the pie. Like Amazon.
"The federal government opportunity is enormous," said Adam Selipsky, a vice president at Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing unit. "We believe that will be a very significant business for Amazon Web Services going forward."
Significant enough to hand over all related and unrelated "cloudy" data to the client on asap basis? And if not now, maybe tomorrow - after all there is much more deficit spending in the future of the US.
The Defense Department, which manages many of the nation's intelligence assets, including the National Security Agency, spent about $35 billion on information technology in the fiscal year that ended last September, down from the 2010 peak of roughly $38 billion, according to research firm IDC Government Insights.
The rise of cloud computing—where users share space on hundreds or thousands of Internet-connected servers—has created an opening for less traditional vendors.
The CIA surprised IBM earlier this year when it picked Amazon to build a cloud-computing service that would connect the broader intelligence community. The contract could be worth as much as an estimated $600 million over its initial four-year term. A win for Amazon could help unlock doors with other security-sensitive government agencies and commercial clients like Wall Street banks—big, profitable sectors that have long been IBM's turf.
IBM protested the award, and the Government Accountability Office recommended last week that the CIA reopen negotiations. The agency has 60 days to say whether it will follow the GAO's recommendation. "At this time the agency is reviewing details of the GAO decision," a CIA spokesman said.
A spokesman for IBM said the company anticipates the reopening of the contract proposal process. A spokeswoman for Amazon Web Services said it looks forward to a fast resolution of the issues
Amazon may not be profitable, but it sure loves letting the government use its cloud:
In May, Amazon Web Services announced its U.S. businesses received security authorization from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide some cloud-computing services. The key stamp of approval could help bring more government business to the Amazon unit, which already works with 300 U.S. government agencies including the Treasury Department, Mr. Selipsky said.
IBM is a technology supplier to the intelligence agencies. It sometimes installs software for free, with the benefit being that it gets to test new technology and keep the intellectual property, a person familiar with the matter said. Over the last two years, the NSA and the CIA have been testing parts of Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-playing artificial-intelligence system, the person said.
The New York Times reported the intelligence agencies' testing of Watson earlier.
Who would have thought that indirectly spying on one clients, and not to mention citizens, would become one of the most lucrative revenue streams?
To the CIA we all the best of luck in picking the lucky winner. We also hope the compensation in terms of pieces of silver is 30 with at least eight zeroes behind it, or sufficiently high to allow the CEOs to sleep peacefully at night, under the NSA-super. As for everyone else using "the cloud", be careful when it mutates from Cloud "Nine" to "NSA."
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I believe there are rules prohibiting the government from replicating anything already available from private contractors. Therein lies the business model.
Jeffrey Bezos: I don't know what Bilderberg is...
Everybody keeps talking about these Build-a-Burger people. Are the the "have it your way" people? Do they run a food shop that operates like a Build-a-Bear workshop?
Build-an-empire workshop. Featuring Crony the Crow.
We are all data points on someone else's revenue stream...
(Keep working, drone...)
What would the Facebook IPO have looked like if they could have openly claimed .GOV kickbacks as part of their revenue stream?
This article is actually a bit misleading.
Amazon has operated a US federal govt. "region" in AWS for a couple of years. It's essentially a separate large datacenter for miscellaneous federal customers who are not willing to put their stuff in AWS public data centers. The CIA private cloud is a smaller version of the same thing -- the CIA would never put its computing actrivities in Amazon's public cloud, so Amazon agreed to build them an exclusive, highly secured data center.
Providing private clouds to the government does not in itself give the government access to data on Amazon's public cloud. (Of course, the NSA probaby has all the access they want, which is a completely unrelated matter, and it would be true even if the government did not hire Amazon to build private clouds.) The sensitivity is rather the opposite -- the government worries that using public clouds would expose its data to hacking, so they demand exclusive infrastructure sealed off from the public.
Yes, you could suspect that Amazon would play nice with the feds and give up its customers' data willingly when it is simultaneously seeking billion-dollar contracts with the security state. And yes, AWS has suffered a bit of a reputation in the past for being a place where some bad guys buy computing power to do bad things. In webmaster circles, there is a whole sub-culture devoted to tracking AWS IP addresses so they can be blocked from one's servers, on the assumption that anything coming from AWS is likely to be harmful. AWS users have undoubtedly been of great interest to the feds for a long time, and will remain so. It's probably true of any public cloud. So don't expect any privacy from .gov in a public cloud, whether or not the owner does contracts for the feds. Government access to everything in public cloud computing services was probably an important goal of CISPA.
Instead of them having access to all public data, the public should have access to all spook data. Criminal activity around the planet would diminish rapidly.
The Nazi's chose IBM to track down the firearms and the Jews.
I'd guess IBM if recent events are any clue.
AAPL>IBM ?
.
Dvd&Cnq
The number code tattoos on Jews arms?
That was Big Blue! Maybe they brought that up in the GAO protest.
Do you even know what you're talking about, or just having fun in creative writing?
IBM provided the computing (database & info filtering), but it was the Nazis who engraved the plain, legible numbers (not codes) on the Right Forearm.
Do you even know how many digits these numbers had? Without googling for this?
8?
5
When I was a child, I saw the some forearms of Auschwitz survivors, who where there 1941-45.
If you want to do a bit of research, try these little-know sites:
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/uploads/2007/03/a.htm (List of death certificates, last names starting with A)
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2007/03/24627.php?theme=9
If you like, you can copy/paste the data into Excel, convert text to columns, and then sort by town or religion. Interesting stats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tatuerat_f%C3%A5ngnummer.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Auschwitz_survivor_displays_tattoo_det...
It clearly varied, as you can see from the photos above (both 6 digits).
Where Amazon employs subtle principles of negative selling in an effort to undermine IBM's efforts.
http://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Corporation-Expanded-ebook...
Amazing book. Read about half of it, years ago, before I succumbed to the mountain of info and data. Amazing research. Must have had a small army helping the author (Edwin Black). But some interesting 'takeaways' on corporate games of profit. Prescott Bush (father of GHW Bush and grandfather of GW Bush) wasn't exactly a saint, as history and records show.
Well, you'd figure so......but this time its the Jews who are running the monetary circus, and they *might* have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to IBM lol
Amazon has been a good corporate partner of the United States. And by good corporate partner, I mean, been a consisent warden of the consumptiontration camp that is the United States Economy.
While in Kommiefornia...
http://www.foxbusiness.com/government/2013/06/11/california-on-brink-pen...
A growing number of key California cities are a lot worse off than previously thought, thanks to new changes coming in the way state and local governments must account for their pension costs.
The pension changes from Moody’s, and separately the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, scheduled for this month, could result in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Azusa and Inglewood joining fiscally troubled Stockton and San Bernardino, among others, as severe credit risks. It's all largely due to soaring employee retirement costs, according to new analysis based on the methodology by Bob Williams and his team at State Budget Solution (SBS), a non-partisan organization that studies state budget crises.
The new rules could nearly double California’s unfunded liabilities to $328.6 billion. Moreover, California cities that have already filed for bankruptcy protection, like Stockton and Vallejo, will fall deeper into the red.
Officials in these California cities did not return calls for comment.
Government retiree costs to date have been improperly underreported nationwide to taxpayers, says Moody’s. New government rules in effect at the end of this month from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board seek to fix this problem, which could show California is worse off than expected. A growing number of Senators also now warn these pension costs could result in a taxpayer bailout of the states.
just wait until the local "law enforcement" gets the greedy mitts on PRISM.
will boost those revenues right up...w/ enough to stick a greasy few in those back pockets.
Ain't that nice? The rest of America will be forced to bail out the commies in California... Just like the EU is forced to bail out Greece or Spain or Portugal... at least in the EU they acted like those countries would have to do something in exchange for money... but you betcha the bailout of commiefornia will be done without any restrictions.
That's probably part of the deal for taking in some of those 70,000 Syrian "refugees".
High earners I hear.
Oh goodie.
Do they get to bring their MANPADS with them?
simple solution: just don't use it.
The government?
Now we know why these companies are propped up by the 'market' with sky-high P/E's (with no relationship to their actual economic productivity or growth rates). As well as virtually unlimited H-1B visas (despite resume queues that receive literally millions of resumes from qualified software engineers). They've essentially been crowned TBTF's by the US gov't.
Open the pod bay doors HAL.
Amongst the scary things out there is what AMZN kindle and I'm guessing other e-books out there are gathering...
old article:
"Your E-Book Is Reading You" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html
"The reality is that while the NSA, which is a public entity through and through, is allowed and expected to do whatever its superiors tell it (i.e., the White House)...."
You have that backwards...
Administrations come and go. The real power brokers don't.
Yep. The White House is a puppet. Anyone who doesn't know that isn't worth reading.
Exactly.
Look at who comes and goes every 2-6 years,
Look at those who stay in positionis of power. Benny, Timmy, Summers et al
Textbook fascism.
Yes, and it is well past the time that I need to stop using the internet altogether. It's just too creepy these days. See y'all at the halliburton death camps.
If you seriously wish to protest, start using other search engines, book retailers and so on. Try ixquick.com
https://ixquick.com/eng/prism-program-revealed.html
And how do we know IXQUICK isn't a CIA/NSA/Chinese Government/Google front ?
Henrique just asked me this on Max Keiser's site:
Here’s a serious question: if the government is downloading stuff you wrote, isn’t that intellectual property theft? Thus, if you can prove that the government intercepted (that is, downloaded) an email you sent, couldn’t you sue them for piracy?
Might be an interesting path to go down – civil suits alleging copyright infringement.
I also wanted to ask this question over at Zero Hedge, but I don’t have access to the Comments section. If someone who does have access would like to do so, please do so.
Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/06/time-to-play-william-banzai7s-stasi-brotopea/comment-page-1/#lw77Cu65Ol613rJK.99
Let me tell you -- if the government does it then it is legal -- remember - they own the courts - they get the verdicts they want regardless of what written law is. Been there and know how it works.
Theoretically, this kind of action does not have to be brought exclusively in the US. It could be brought in the EU for example. It could be set up as a civil claim by Kim Dot Com as another example.
Yeah well go for it. I beat my head against the wall for a few years too. No regrets but got my ass kicked every time in court because the government out lies you.
Nothing personal, they have deeper pockets. Much deeper.
There's a reason why litigation is the sport of Kings
In general:
criminal law = indigent treadmill/spectacle for small fish; and
civil law = the resolution of rich people problems.
There are a lot of people who fall in-between and are largely eliminated from the court system... I suspect that this unserved mass will decrease over time as the plethora of lawyers gets more and more desperate for clients, but it could also be that small claims courts are expanded accordingly (and jurisdictional maximums are increased) and we let pro se litigants duke it out more in a "bouncy castle" type court.
in France, one can claim droit à s'opposer à toute atteinte préjudiciable à l'honneur et à la réputation
The Tyranny for Dummies manual states that once you or your property, be it physical or intellectual, enter the public domain it's all up for grabs. Also, unread intercepts are not violations since the material is still technically private, blah, blah, blah............
WB7, the problem W/that is you don't own the origin site where you put the email. Your ISP technically owns all email content by virtue of you placing it on there property.
Same as a graffiti artist suing Bruce Krasting for using his work. The graffiti artist does'nt own the wall, train car,etc.
Crazy huh?
if you read the EULA's of various services im sure you gave up any privacy. who the fuck reads those? It'd be scary to know what's in em. We need a open source co-op that reads all that stuff.
You just need to submit to it so you can find out what's in it.........
Kind of like how you need to pass a law so you can figure out what's in it...
The discovery portion of the case may be tough for the plaintiff, what with the whole national security thing.
Find an attorney with sec clearance and give it a shot.
Imma ask this on Bill Handles radio show, just for kicks
Depends on what jurisdiction. Data privacy law in Hk is very strict but limited liabiliaty (Common Law) might not get at the extent of the commercial violation. Need to protect any email communication with the standard warning that lawyers use as to third party breaches--you know the this email etc. Many universities and lawyers will state this after their email communications. Not sure this is a 'protection' if the other side of the equation is a spook scoop.
If you're not buying semi- local and paying with cash then you're freaking crazy. I can see the NSA goons now... According to Amazon's records you have bought two slings and two scopes in the past month. We need you to turn over both you rifles right now.
Oh boy- that is just the tip of the iceberg with my AMZN orders.
Considering that VISA/MC/Amex are forwarding data as well, they're not getting much more from Amazon that they aren't getting through other means.
It's a challenge to buy almost any bit of tech that costs more than $500 for cash these days. I'm just presuming I'm on the short list of Main Core or whatever new name they're using. Given that they've been gathering data for more than a decade, unless you raised your kids to only use cash, they've got something they don't like the looks of on virtually everyone.
amazon is a cia front - it is not a private entity....it has been in business for years and loses money hand over fist - nothing which a truly private concern could do....it has already handed over every electron of data it has to the government....
i was going to order from the nazis - before i knew they were nazis - when they would not process my order without a phone number - just in case my mailing address would not work. i told them to go fuck themselves....i am an ex-amazon customer and proud of it.
One of the more common arguments to surface out of the statist is: "well, the phone company keeps that data so big fucking deal" Yes retard they do but I am free to contract with the fucking phone company and if I find out they are abusing it I can tell them where to shove it, ever try doing that with the IRS?
Yes, I tried it. Now I walk funny.
Losing $ has nothing to do with being in business and everything to do w/ the stock market. Without the Fed most companies would be in the same boat as AMZN.
Nah, there's been tons of companies, particularly those that actually make things (rather than just use cheap money to speculate) that have been seriously damaged by the Federal Reserve and Helicopter Ben's actions. After all, bad money drives out the good money. Why run a factory, when there's far superior profits to be had by buying US T-bonds or similar proxies thereof on margin at 0% rates?
Otto
You are spot on. There are thousands of companies whose sole customers are federal departments and agencies.
FedBizOpps ( https://www.fbo.gov ), the follow on the old yellow sheet Commerce Business Daily, is a gold mine for companies selling goods and services into the federal system.
Worth checking out sometime, along with the Federal Register ( https://www.federalregister.gov ) where the calls for proposals and vendors are made public.
Who junks a post like this? Troll fucking city
The "Main Core" database must be huge after 30 years.
https://www.startpage.com/
https://www.startmail.com/ (become a beta tester)
Corporate welfare bitchez.........
What Chinese Bloggers think: http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/06/chinese-web-users-react-to-prism-th...
“If a country intrudes on personal interests in this way, why would one need a country?”
excellent question
In case you guys didn't know... The Chinese bought IBM years ago.
TPTB did not object. But when they tried to buy a Californian oil company, to get a sear at the US oil cartel table, they kiboshed the deal.
Now they're simplify prepping for a US-China escalation.
Chinese company bought the IBM Personal Computer Division.
Beyond that, I don't know.
oldie but goodie from il duce:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
or was it mike ruppert playing il duce?
This is just plain wrong, and it demonstrates why this quote is not just false but misleading. “Corporations” were not individual businesses. Under fascist corporatism, sectors of the economy were divided into corporate groups, whose activities and interactions were managed and coordinated by the government. The idea was to split the difference between socialism and laissez faire capitalism, letting the state control and direct the economy from the top-down without itself owning the means of production.
The idea was that this body would negotiate contracts and centrally plan production throughout the economy, regulating the sectors of art, industry, agriculture, trade, comm-unication, transportation, and finance — thus settling disputes, producing social harmony, and generating economic efficiency. In reality, it did none of this, and the system was used for rent-seeking, and to reward friends and crush enemies of the government.
Interesting blogpost, but it entirely misses the point. The quote may be inauthentic, but it Is definitely accurate. The fact that it carried a different a slightly different meaning in the theoretical context of Italian Fascism does not mean we cannot use it today, though it is important that people know the differences as well as the similarities. The point stands that the state merges directly with the economy, but this by itself does not constitute fascism, it is too vague anyway. The author goes to pains to prove this very point, he merely (over)emphasizes the fact that the state is in control, that it is more of a takeover than a merger. If not for the number of people who blame corporations while giving the government a free pass, it would be a minor point of only academic interest. Unfortunately such stupid people exist, and in large numbers, and they continue to fundamentally misunderstand the nature and role of the state. The blog did not mention this aspect of the issue, though it is clearly there, between the lines.
agreed that his point misses the point. i see as more of a chicken and egg scenario. whether it's the chicken or the egg who's driivng is irrelevant. still thought it was a interesting bit of history on a well-used quote.
got no problem myself quoting Mike Ruppert paraphrasing Mussolini. he hit the hammer on the nail with that one.
So welcome back mercantilism. Capitalism is dead and buried and America has given up on economic freedom. It's now every corporate/military/state for itself and to hell with the victims. There is no Geneva Convention for victims of economic warfare, no refugee camps, no bailouts, no Red Cross assistance. Learn subsistence.
It's awful hard to call people who line up at Wall-Mart at three in the morning in order to be the first to get a hold of the latest techno gadgets (among other things) victims...........
People who kill themselves are victims of suicide.
Awful easy to call them assholes though
Looks like we may finally get Holder's head on a stick. Apparently FISC court ruled PRISM was unconstitutional as far back as 2011 and the DOJ moved in have the ruling sealed so they could continue an unconstitutional program without any oversight.
http://freepatriot.org/2013/06/12/government-court-rules-prism-program-u...
You may have heard about the NSA-based PRISM program that’s been blowing up the web lately. What you probably haven’t heard, is that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that it was unconstitutional. In 2011.
Why hasn’t this come up before now? Simple, once the ruling made its way to the DOJ, they immediately moved to seal the judgement and keep it a secret from the American people. In a recent (and rare) public filing, the DOJ’s actions are made clear (if you have the patience to read all the way through it, that is).
Direct link to the DOJ filing
https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/doj_opposition_to_eff_m...
So, let’s follow the chain of events here:
Yeah, that seems to be about the size of it. As if the DOJ hadn’t already lost the confidence of the American people, now we learn that they actively work to hide violations of the bill of rights. Nice.
Congress should be calling for this fuckers head and criminal charges against him and the DOJ lawyers that worked this case.
It's a Hydra, many heads need to be on many stakes.
So glad you said this.
the court didn't know holder was continuing the practice?
I don't know what the court knew only that Holder and the DOJ had the ruling buried so no one could see so the program could continue.
if true, that could be the straw that broke the camel toe.
Yes, Bezos the ponytailed moron with an online bookstore which never made a profit, built Amazon into its current state all by himself. Unfuckingbelievable. Perhaps sending this to my friends that think I'm a conspiracy but will wake them up.
Its very hard to even get a coherent answer as to why Amazon has a P/E ratio of 500 or so. Or what's so great about AWS or EC3. Even the tech professionals I associate with can't seem to answer such.
AT&T wireless every make a dime?
It now becomes clearer why Bezos was at the Bilderberg meeting. The planning goes forward...
Ponytail? Bezos? I thought the guy was bald.
Yes the multiple is obscene
Keep buying shit from Amazon (or eBay) because you get the best deals... L "oh" fucking, L... Jumping Jesus H Christ, I've been using the intertubes longer than either of those websites have been around. My total interaction time (or purchases) is exactly ZERO.
... and FUCK YOU BERNANKE!
... and, BitChEZ!
" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
Benito Mussolini
Quite so. Here's another of Musso's quotes:
More at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/benito_mussolini.html
GE Healthcare to spend $2 bln developing software
11 June 2013, (MarketWatch)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ge-healthcare-to-spend-2-bln-developing-software-2013-06-11
Pentagon Five-Year Cybersecurity Plan Seeks $23 Billion
10 June 2013, by Tony Capaccio (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-10/pentagon-five-year-cybersecurity-plan-seeks-23-billion.html
IBM, Indians Badly Managed is not the IBM of yesteryear.
It is a guarenteed failure in anything and everything they do.
PS. I think one or two researchers in their Silicon Valley research facility are good but the firm is to be avoided.
Participate in the latest alternatives by attending your local Linux User Group meetings.
It is very profitable and I have had my campaign to license and tax data sellers for the last couple of years, billions are made. Walgreens makes short of a billion a year selling data so watch what you do there.
Now on healthcare, tons of profits are made and all of those devices for consumer heatlh, well most could not survive without selling data, just read their privacy policies. I'm glad more are paying attention here as it's a rip, they make millions selling your data and when the flaws and errors catch up wihich are growing in numbers, you are on your own dime to fix..fair? Not hardly.
When it comes to insurance exchanges, the biggest health insurer in the US is also one of the biggest data sellers too and they make millions at it. Also as a side note, see how embedded United is with the military too. They have more truckloads of subsidiaires than you can shake a stick at so when not recognized by the public and others, let the subsidiary do the work. They have the big Tri-Care contract and hired Steve Larsen who wrote most of the healthcare law from HHS, and now look what this division of United does.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/06/united-healthcare-referral-algori...
With all these subsidiaries they have you know data is being shared and analyzed.
Back on topic, why id the public not more outraged? I keep asking that question but most have a hard time getting their heads around how the data mechanics make all of this work. It is an intangible and not something you can see, and that was the entire root of the Occupy movement which I called when it started. Something was wrong but folks could not put their fingers on it. Heck I even had an editor at Forbes back then ask me how this works, so lots don't get this.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/06/recommended-reading-wheres-outrag...
Looking for major insurers on state heatlh insurance exchanges..they are not there when the living is good off of DOD and VA contracts, they dont need us. Uncile Sam is taking care of United it appears. Again everyone knows about the Tri-Care but look at the LHI contract which nobody ever discussed and further more has no clue this is a Untied subsidiary. NSA inerests here too...could be
IBM or Amazon for Spook infrastructure?
My money, errmmm... BitCoin, is on IBM - if for no other reason than an ex-IBMer - that fat little toad Gerstner - currently squats atop the "Ex Presidents, Prime Ministers, Uber Spooks & Narco Kingpins Retirement Club" aka The Carlyle Group.
All part of "Keeping it in the Family" .
Also, probably figures its a good opp. to "plump up" his stock-options a little.
based on announcement of the further job cuts in IBM the winner is ... Amazon
Speaking about parasitic pigs at the gov't trough hasn't't the DoD been Microsoft's biggest customer?
The rewards to some private companies engaged with the NSA in spying activities may go beyond lucrative payments for system contract development. The information ultimately gathered while operating these systems in the name of national security could have huge commercial value to those with exclusive access to it. Suppose if while spying on the Chinese, Booz Allen Hamilton happens to uncover some secret government plan to step up oil and commodity purchases, or build a pipeline somewhere. Might that be valuable information for the Carlyle Group to have on an exclusive basis? I think so. I think such information could give them all kinds of advantages over their competition in private sector activities. It would not be unlike the advantage SAC was gaining in the markets from information gathered through its expert networks. I can imagine BAH and Carlyle being, “willing to use any means, such as diplomatic intimidation, to prevent this information from becoming public”, all in the name of national security, of course. The information itself is potentially a lot more valuable to them commercially than anything they make from their government contract with NSA. If so, is this whole affair not also another example of crony capitalism, with the government funding activities in the national interest which indirectly favor and produce huge profits for a select chosen few in private sector activities (you know, like the Fed’s relationship with Wall Street)? Perhaps it’s the Carlyle Group which should be paying the NSA, instead of the other way around, for the exclusive right to spy on others in the name of national security? Perhaps the NSA should be auctioning those rights to the highest bidder instead of spending taxpayer dollars on it?
"The hand that gives is above the hand that receives."
If the government makes Booze Allen Hamilton and Carlysle dependent on it them for their existence then the government has captured and assimilated those two companies.
The temptations of evil, eh?
Magnot line, breach. Ron Paul was wrong it is not "Soft Fascism." .. How abut CEO pay to top line with clawbacks. Not earnings. That would put a crimp in 1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
when fascism comes to America it will come
wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." ...
Maybe "so called" investors should consider how much of corporate America's revenue and profits are funded out of Obummer's TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT. How much money are the US spy agencies sending to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, Microsoft, ATT, Verizon et. al. in exchange for data on the essentially good and harmless people of the United States of America.
Are there any implications to be drawn on this for the future? Please keep in mind that control comes out of the creation of dependencies. Are the large data collecting companies becoming DEPENDENT on the spies, spooks and thugs to maintain their P&L and justify the obnoxious and antisocial salaries and perks of the captured and corrupted heads of corporate America?
COTS, bitchez!
Taxpayer money? Hardly. That's just for salaries, office equipment and such. The payoff money comes directly from from the CIA's drug trade.