Slashdot Mirror

theodp writes "Mayor Bloomberg's perception of money, opines Gothamist's Christopher Robbins, is somewhat different than most non-billionaires. Just hours before the leader in the city's $740 million CityTime web-based time and attendance boondoggle was arrested for allegedly taking $5M in kickbacks, Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program that 'we actually did a pretty good job here, in retrospect.' Overshooting the projected $68M it would cost, adds Robbins, 'pretty much sounds like the exact opposite of a 'pretty good job'.' A US Attorney said SAIC Project Manager Gerald Denault was charged with accepting more than $5M in kickbacks laundered through international shell companies while steering more than $450M of city funds to the tech company behind the kickbacks. In December, CityTime consultants were charged with stealing $80 million."

An Anonymous SAIC Employee writes "The 'independent' company hired by ICANN to advise them on who should run the .com and .net registry has recommended that Verisign (fact sheet) should be chosen to continue to run the registry. Is it any surprise? Telcordia was owned by SAIC (Fact Sheet) during the time the study was conducted. SAIC bought Telcordia (fact sheet) (then Bellcore) in Nov. 1997 and sold it March 15, 2005. Network Solutions was bought by SAIC in 1995 and sold in 2000. Also, Telcordia worked with Verisign on the ENUM project. Is the fox guarding the hen house?"

An Anonymous SAIC Employee writes "The 'independent' company hired by ICANN to advise them on who should run the .com and .net registry has recommended that Verisign (fact sheet) should be chosen to continue to run the registry. Is it any surprise? Telcordia was owned by SAIC (Fact Sheet) during the time the study was conducted. SAIC bought Telcordia (fact sheet) (then Bellcore) in Nov. 1997 and sold it March 15, 2005. Network Solutions was bought by SAIC in 1995 and sold in 2000. Also, Telcordia worked with Verisign on the ENUM project. Is the fox guarding the hen house?"

An Anonymous SAIC Employee writes "The 'independent' company hired by ICANN to advise them on who should run the .com and .net registry has recommended that Verisign (fact sheet) should be chosen to continue to run the registry. Is it any surprise? Telcordia was owned by SAIC (Fact Sheet) during the time the study was conducted. SAIC bought Telcordia (fact sheet) (then Bellcore) in Nov. 1997 and sold it March 15, 2005. Network Solutions was bought by SAIC in 1995 and sold in 2000. Also, Telcordia worked with Verisign on the ENUM project. Is the fox guarding the hen house?"

Rick Zeman writes "In the wake of the Geoge Mason University identity theft comes another: SAIC, an employee-owned company, has had a break-in which '...netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.' These employees include anyone who's owned SAIC stock, and since it's an employee-owned company, that's most of them, including 'some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials.'"

asmithmd1 writes "We already knew Diebold software is insecure, now the Baltimore Sun is reporting that the Governor of Maryland has asked SAIC to review the software in Diebold voting machines. Diebold has graciously allowed SAIC access to their proprietary code. Why isn't this code open source by law?" In a related story, a trade show for closed-source electronic voting systems is doing their best to keep critics out. Update: 08/07 15:23 GMT by M : Diebold's website security is less than outstanding.

Qnal writes "e-Week is reporting that Microsoft Windows 2000 has been awarded Common Criteria Certification.. Read more of the propaganda here. Basically, according to the article Any user running Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 is running exactly the same system that was evaluated. The Common Criteria certification is an internationally recognized ISO standard established for evaluating the security of infrastructure technology products. Too bad it takes 3 Service Packs..."

Tom Holroyd passed along some interesting pieces of information from Eric S Arnum's recent piece over at SonicNet. Many of you saw that the RIAA has decided to lauch their Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). Well, that's not so interesting on it's own, but their choice of company is. It's a subsidary of SAIC, a privately held company that does work in secure defense commnuications. The company (SAIC) has worked with the CIA, NSA, and Navy, amongst others. Click below for the full story. On Tuesday, the RIAA launched this effort to apply encryption keys to digital music, their Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). Ho hum.

The RIAA contracted with this consultancy called Global Integrity to run the SDTI Forum rather than run it themselves. Ho hum. But then I noticed that Global Integrity was a subsidiary of SAIC. Holy shit.

SAIC has been accused of being a CIA front, but that's probably false. What they are is a privately held company started by physicists from the Los Alamos NM lab who worked on nuclear weapons and studied the effects of radiation on humans. But SAIC now specializes in defense communications, specifically signal intelligence, so its customers include not just the CIA, but also NSA, Navy, National Reconnaiscence Agency, DISA, and DARPA.

They receive $900 million a year in classified, "black budget" national security communications contracts. See their press release on their annual report or the annual report itself (PDF: http://www.saic.com/news/1998report.html)

I first came across SAIC in 1995 when they bought Network Solutions Inc., which does all the domain name registrations for com, net, org, and edu. Therefore, SAIC has control of the database that contains the who, what & where for each and every Web site and email server in those domains -- pretty handy info for the NSA wiretappers...

Two years later, SAIC bought Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), which at the time assigned all area codes in North America, and still to this day provides the software that runs all (800) numbers and 80% of all US phone gear. Again, not a bad acquisition for a sigint contractor, to be running the Toll Free system and assigning area codes...

So now SAIC's consultants are going to help the RIAA decide what encryption schemes should be used to lock up digital music. As the church lady might say, "how conveeeeenient..." But if you buy the premise that entertainment is a strategic export, that preventing the Chinese and others from bootlegging Mariah Carey is a matter of national security, then why shouldn't SAIC be doing the encryption consulting?

I haven't heard of these guys at Global Integrity Corp. before. But anyone with an office in McLean, Virginia is most likely working for the spooks. Who suggested them to the RIAA?

Eric

Tom Holroyd passed along some interesting pieces of information from Eric S Arnum's recent piece over at SonicNet. Many of you saw that the RIAA has decided to lauch their Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). Well, that's not so interesting on it's own, but their choice of company is. It's a subsidary of SAIC, a privately held company that does work in secure defense commnuications. The company (SAIC) has worked with the CIA, NSA, and Navy, amongst others. Click below for the full story. On Tuesday, the RIAA launched this effort to apply encryption keys to digital music, their Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). Ho hum.

The RIAA contracted with this consultancy called Global Integrity to run the SDTI Forum rather than run it themselves. Ho hum. But then I noticed that Global Integrity was a subsidiary of SAIC. Holy shit.

SAIC has been accused of being a CIA front, but that's probably false. What they are is a privately held company started by physicists from the Los Alamos NM lab who worked on nuclear weapons and studied the effects of radiation on humans. But SAIC now specializes in defense communications, specifically signal intelligence, so its customers include not just the CIA, but also NSA, Navy, National Reconnaiscence Agency, DISA, and DARPA.

They receive $900 million a year in classified, "black budget" national security communications contracts. See their press release on their annual report or the annual report itself (PDF: http://www.saic.com/news/1998report.html)

I first came across SAIC in 1995 when they bought Network Solutions Inc., which does all the domain name registrations for com, net, org, and edu. Therefore, SAIC has control of the database that contains the who, what & where for each and every Web site and email server in those domains -- pretty handy info for the NSA wiretappers...

Two years later, SAIC bought Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), which at the time assigned all area codes in North America, and still to this day provides the software that runs all (800) numbers and 80% of all US phone gear. Again, not a bad acquisition for a sigint contractor, to be running the Toll Free system and assigning area codes...

So now SAIC's consultants are going to help the RIAA decide what encryption schemes should be used to lock up digital music. As the church lady might say, "how conveeeeenient..." But if you buy the premise that entertainment is a strategic export, that preventing the Chinese and others from bootlegging Mariah Carey is a matter of national security, then why shouldn't SAIC be doing the encryption consulting?

I haven't heard of these guys at Global Integrity Corp. before. But anyone with an office in McLean, Virginia is most likely working for the spooks. Who suggested them to the RIAA?

Eric