Oracle Donates Software for Big Brother Database

8onal writes: "C|Net is reporting that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has followed through with his threat, I mean promise, to assist with Uncle Sam's crimefighting efforts. "...Ellison said he has delivered Oracle's 9i database management software to a U.S. government agency for national security, but he declined to give further details, such as which agency or for what usage." Seeing as how he has already supplied the CIA with software, I bet it went to another 3-letter group."

Comments

Standard marketing technique

[Raindeer]

If the US governement really falls for this obvious marketing technique, they are dumber then I allready thought they were. Having worked within the Dutch government I know that once a database has been addopted, it hardly ever gets replaced for another dbms. They might build another front end, upgrade the dbms, but switching from vendor is just not an option. It is too scary to make such a big step. Oracle knows this and supplying the database for a national ID-card will mean business for life.

Also don't forget, that there will be many government agencies that want to tie in their database with the national ID-database or base their database on it. Oracle will have a foot and a leg in the door there as well.

Re:Standard marketing technique

[wirefarm]

>>>but switching from vendor is just not an option.
>nope, it is always an option.

Rarely.
In many gov't shops, the Oracle sits on the one Sun box in the place and is only touched buy the ouside vendor-unix guys who stop in once-in-a-while to tweak it. (Those guys who never come to lunch with you.)
You may have in-house people who can fsck around with an in-house built Ms Sql Server or Oracle db, but that rarely has anything to do with that one lonely off-limts box in the corner.

Technically, "yes". All you have to do is email the vendor and get a data dictionary for the 'box-in-the-corner', but in reality, don't hold your breath. Either you will never get it, or worse, you will, then you realize that it is such crap that it will take two years before you could possibly get a system working in any other home-grown rdbms. They have the advantage: though the databases are total crap, design-wise, they've spent the last ten years polishing these turds into bombproof 'systems'.
(Ignore the little man behind the curtain... Ignore that box in the corner...)
I wish it weren't so...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Why this does not matter

[wackysootroom]

1. If Larry Ellison offered you a free copy of arguably the #1 database server (and the most expensive) on the market, would you turn him down?

2. The article makes no mention of what kind of data will be stored in the database server.

Even if there is no 'National ID card' information, Ellison saved our government lots of money by giving us expensive software. Lobbying the legislature, writing congress letters, etc. is up to us.

IMHO, the government probably listened to his schpiel, said thanks, and used the software for something else besides the ID card.

Look at the history of SSN

[sllort]

One of the most popular uses of the Social Security Number is stalking your ex-spouse. Larry's database should make this... easier?

Then there's the ACLU's stance: There must be no national ID system -- either in law or in practice.

But all of this means nothing, and preaching to the /. choir is pointless. There's only one number the politicians will look at. And it's this one.

If you want to do something proactive, try to do something about that.

Turf wars among the intelligence agencies

[fhwang]

In the story, Ellison is quoted as saying: "There is cooperation (among government agencies). But there's a lot of data fragmentation."

Of course, one of the biggest reasons for the data fragmentation is that that intelligence agencies don't cooperate -- if anything, they're notorious for their turf wars. Ellison is downplaying the organizational battles in order to pitch his technical solution.

One of the causes of the turf war is that the intelligence agencies are poorly defined and poorly monitored. Once an intelligence agency is created, it tends to have a life of its own. Case in point: The CIA was originally chartered to help the U.S. fight the Cold War, something it did with laughable incompetence at times. But when the Cold War ended -- an event which took the agency entirely by surprise -- nobody at the CIA thought "Since our job is done, let's tell Congress to shut us down so we can be unemployed." No, of course, they looked around for other threats to pitch to the White House. With terrorism, they seem to have found it.

Except for the fact that much of the anti-terrorism work will be domestic, and that therefore it falls under the aegis of the FBI, instead. But can you imagine the CIA bosses, always anxious about Congressional funding and eager to get into the anti-terrorism spotlight, staying out of the fray? Forget about it.

Re:But which OS!?!?

[alen]

Do you seriously think he is going to recommend NT and an easy future migration to SQL Server? Some people in the government already don't know anything except for microsoft and why make it worse?

The question is....

[darrad]

Do we really want any database that contains the kind of information we are talking about running on a piece of software developed by a corporate entity.

I may be a Black Hellicopter KOOK here, but I am thinking back the the movie, "The Net"(Bad movie, good story)

If the US Government sets up this database, running on software developed by any third party, then security will always be a problem. How many "Easter Egg" type bugs exist in most of today's software. What happens if one of the coders at Oracle was having a bad day, and added a backdoor to the database, and then publishes the path to it on the Internet?

I don't pretend to have a solution to this, short of not doing anything, which is probably the best thing we can do. Knee-jerk reactions to the events of 9/11 will end up costing us more than the actual events.

I think someone should propose to Ellison to have all of his personal data (credit card #'s, SSN, financial statements, "real" income, not what is reported to the IRS)stored in an Oracle database that is web-enabled. That will tell us all we need to know.

Scary stuff....

Uhh.. software donation. So what?

[mindstrm]

I mean seriously.. if the price of the Oracle software is what stands in the way of the powers that be rolling out such a system, they have a serious problem already.

I also don't see the big controversy. The government already HAS huge databases, analyzed by supercomputers, to figure out things like taxes, and whatnot.. what's another database? The issue is how things are used, not that they exist.

Re:Responsibility

[MrResistor]

I think this is a straw man arguement. You're blaming the technology for the uses it's being put to, and frankly it's inappropriate. Technology is nothing but a tool, like a hammer. You're essentially asking all hammer manufacturers to shut down because it's possible to kill someone with a hammer.

Your arguement is certainly pacifist, but not freedom-loving at all. Censorship is the enemy of freedom, even if it is self imposed! The GPL is about Free-as-in-speech, and if you alter the license so that, for example, GPLed code can't be used in weapon systems, then it is no longer Free-as-in-speech. You are removing freedoms in order to impose your own pacifist morallity on others. That doesn't sound very freedom-loving to me. Feel free to write your own license for your code that prevents military use, but don't ask for such a clause to be added to a license like the GPL, it violates the basic principles on which that license is built.

Personally, I would have no problems writing code specifically for weapons systems if I were being paid to do it, nor would I be bothered if code I wrote for some other purpose were used in a weapon system. The for pay requirement above is merely a reflection of my desire to be paid, and my recognition that the military-industrial complex has the capability to do that. Unfortunately a military is necessary in our world, and a modern military requires technological systems. Someone is going to get paid to create those systems, and it might as well be me.

RDBs have many potential uses, none of which are destructive (unlike nuclear physics and medicine). Some of the potential uses are invasive, but does that mean the world should be deprived of this technology? Certainly not, especially considering the only difference between invasive and non-invasive RDBs are the people using them.