SAIC?

[GregD]

They have their hands in a lot these day. The did the analysis (whitewash) of Diebold and the Hopkins report in MD, I heard a while back that they performed a capabilities analysis of Iraq prior to the war, that they are involved over there still in other roles.

Has anyone assembled a "primer" in order to "connect the dots" on these folks?

[pinto]

1. here's one for starters

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/082003Landes/082003landes.html

[deminflorida]

3. Total and Complete Horseshit.....

They escape investor scrutiny because the employees all 41,000 of them own the company. It's a concept that's common all over Europe, so there's nothing shadowey about it. You can't make a company go public in this country even if you wanted too. Keep going, and I'll blow this completely out of the water before it even gets started.

[deminflorida]

4. Just a note, SAIC also does alot of computer security work, and

it sounds like they were contracted to check out the security of the voting systems. That's good, I wouldn't trust anyone else to do the job. If there's a hole somewhere they'll find it and I'd be willing to bet they recommend a paper trail or audit capability as well.

[pinto]

6. I hope they recommend paper trail

to settle fears of unfound glitches or other more conspiricist assumptions. I'm passing on an article I found (in the above post). I hope the allegations of improprieties alluded to are false. I'm not on a witch hunt, believe me.

[lazarus]

8. They did recommend a paper trail

Something you won't hear on DU much.

[pinto]

10. paper trail works for me, those who still have doubts about integrity

can use an absentee ballot.

[althecat]

17. Can you please quote the section of the report ....

Ok Lazarus... where did they recommend a paper trail?



Here are the Maryland recommendations from the executive summary.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0309/S00313.htm

They do not even contain the word "paper"

We recommend that SBE immediately implement the following mitigation strategies to address the identified risks with a rating of high:

1. Bring the AccuVote-TS voting system into compliance with the State of Maryland Information Security Policy and Standards.
2. Consider the creation of a Chief Information Systems Security Officer (CISSO) position at SBE. This individual would be responsible for the secure operations of the AccuVote-TS voting system.
3. Develop a formal, documented, complete, and integrated set of standard policies and procedures. Apply these standard policies and procedures consistently through the LBEs in all jurisdictions.
4. Create a formal, System Security Plan. The plan should be consistent with the State of Maryland Information Security Policy and Standards, Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR), Federal Election Commission (FEC) standards, and industry best practices.
5. Apply cryptographic protocols to protect transmission of vote tallies.
6. Require 100 percent verification of results transmitted to the media through separate count of PCMCIA cards containing the original votes cast.
7. Establish a formal process requiring the review of audit trails at both the application and operating system levels.
8. Provide formal information security awareness, training, and education program appropriate to each user’s level of access.
9. Review any system modifications through a formal, documented, risk assessment process to ensure that changes do not negate existing security controls. Perform a formal risk assessment following any major system modifications, or at least every three years.
10. Implement a formal, documented process to detect and respond to unauthorized transaction attempts by authorized and/or unauthorized users.
11. Establish a formal, documented set of procedures describing how the general support system identifies access to the system.
12. Change default passwords and passwords printed in documentation immediately.
13. Verify through established procedures that the ITA-certified version of software and firmware is loaded prior to product implementation.
14. Remove the SBE GEMS server immediately from any network connections. Rebuild the server from trusted media to assure and validate that the system has not been compromised. Remove all extraneous software not required for AccuVote-TS operation. Move the server to a secure location.
15. Modify procedures for the Logic and Accuracy (L&A) testing to include testing of time-oriented exploits (e.g., Trojans).
16. Discontinue the use of an FTP server to distribute the approved ballots.
17. Implement an iterative process to ensure that the integrity of the AccuVote-TS voting system is maintained throughout the lifecycle process.

[lazarus]

21. Sorry about that

It's SAIC's own voting technology that they recommend uses a paper trail, I got that mixed up.

Of course, one possible interpretation of item 6 is indeed to use a paper trail. They simply state that they recommend "verification", not how it's done. It could be done on stone tablets, I guess.

[ParanoidPat]

11. WTF?

:wtf:

"Keep going, and I'll blow this completely out of the water before it even gets started."

Just who the hell do you think you are anyway? :shrug:

Shades of TFHP! :evilgrin:

[althecat]

14. Way to go pat....

I would like to know the answer to that question too...

:)

[lazarus]

7. That's a funny article

They failed to mention that the sainted Avi Ruben's first job was with an SAIC subsidiary.
And then there's this bit of scare tactics:

SAIC's control over Internet domain names set off alarm bells.

"The shadow ruling-class within the Pentagon," describes SAIC to a tee, according to the Crypt. SAIC has strong business ties to the military and intelligence communities.

Dillon quotes James Warren, an Internet civil liberties activist, "I don't want a spook corporation, particularly a private spook corporation, to be anywhere near a control point on the global cooperative Internet."

It should be remembered that the CIA has a decades-long track record of assisting in the brutal overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world.

Recently, SAIC got the contract to assist other corporations, including Northrop Grumman, in training of the Iraqi Army.

That CIA quote about "brutal overthrows" is nicely tossed in there, isn't it? Makes one think the whole article is just as even-handed and objective, and not designed to paint an evil picture at all.

And the "legal troubles" dug up by Bev Harris and her team are no different than any large military contractor faces. And, again, a case is mentioned ("In 1993 the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an F15 fighter contract.") with no follow-up. Were they guilty? Did they settle?

Sloppy reporting. Interesting that all that is listed is from the early '90s. Anything recent? And anything besides the two cases they pled guilty to? Surely a corporation as evil as this has done many more things than lied on a couple of documents.

From what I can tell, none of the people who think SAIC is the evil "shadow administration" in the Pentagon and Langley actually know what it does, and how it started. They just see a big company with a lot of contracts with the government, and assume it's evil.

Oh, as for DARPA? Let's get real, and realise how big DARPA truly is, and what they really do. Do a Google on DARPA and SAIC.

http://www.saic.com/news/2003/apr/21a.html
A team led by Science Applications International Corporation’s (SAIC) Ocean Sciences Division (OSD) has been awarded a contract to perform Phase 2 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Robust Passive Sonar program (RPS).

Valued at $8.3 million, this cost-plus-fixed-fee contract will be performed over a period of 21 months.

Passive sonar involves listening for noise produced by targets of interest and does not involve any active acoustic transmissions. Under the RPS initiative, DARPA is striving for an order of magnitude improvement for submarine towed array systems in the littoral Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) environment and also to usher in a new generation of advanced array signal processing capabilities for improved passive detection and tracking of other submarines and surface shipping. Phase 1 involved algorithm development, testing and integration, while Phase 2 will demonstrate a real-time prototype hardware system at sea.

http://www.saic.com/news/may01/news05-07-01.html
A team led by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has received an award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop advanced prototype perception systems for unmanned ground vehicles. The $1.5 million award is for the first phase of a possible three-phase agreement that could total as much as $10.2 million.

http://www.saic.com/news/saicmag/2003/biosensor.html
A man dripping sweat staggers toward the baggage carousel at a major U.S. airport. As his scab-encrusted arm reaches for a leather valise, the man coughs a river of blood and collapses.

None of the doctors who see the man can treat him effectively because they are dealing with an unknown pathogen - perhaps a natural mutation or bioengineered agent.

To help provide answers in a scenario such as this, SAIC is helping DARPA SPO (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - Special Projects Office) develop a biosensor that combines advanced genomic and signal processing techniques to identify all known, newly emergent, and bioengineered pathogens (including all viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa).

Known as TIGER (triangulation identification for genetic evaluation of risks), the biosensor uses mass spectrometry to determine the mass of core genetic material selectively extracted from a pathogen. Because it is difficult to distinguish genetic material from thousands of specimens in complex environments (such as a ball of dirt), TIGER uses SAIC-developed signal processing algorithms to read a pathogen's genetic "signature."

In 2001, 2nd quarter, SAIC had revenues over 1.54 billion dollars. Their DARPA contracts totalled around 14 million dollars. DARPA isn't a drop in the bucket of SAIC's contracts.

If SAIC is so evil, how is it they're losing contracts right and left to Carlysle Group and Halliburton companies?

The only area SAIC is truly ahead of those two right now is information technology, because that's where they started. They developed the prototypes the government uses now for most of its IT work.

Also, as has been discussed here before, SAIC is just not built in a way that allows it to be the evil monolith people see. It's actually a whole bunch of employee-owned subsidiaries that cannot be publically traded. It's not run from the top down at all. It's run from the middle.

But none of this matters, because they're big, and they've done work with the government. So they must be bad. Just like all the government service workers, the USPS, the NIH, the CDC, all the rest.

:eyes:

[althecat]

16. Do you really mean all this Lazarus...

First up:

"And the "legal troubles" dug up by Bev Harris and her team are no different than any large military contractor faces. "

Ok....

So are you trying to suggest that ordinary large military contractors are ok? From what I understand about 1) the pentagon budgetary processes 2) the US military and 3) congressional pork - which admittedly is not a great deal - I would like to see why any military contractor should be involved in providing or auditing US voting systems.

Secondly:

"If SAIC is so evil, how is it they're losing contracts right and left to Carlysle Group and Halliburton companies? "

Now I get it...

You are suggesting that in the scheme of military contractors SAIC are the good guys. Says who? They are involved in a corrupt business too... just because they are not doing quite as well as Carlyle doesn't mean they don't stink.

Finally:

But none of this matters, because they're big, and they've done work with the government. So they must be bad. Just like all the government service workers, the USPS, the NIH, the CDC, all the rest.

And to close up you compare them with the Postal Service?

I guess the postal service does deliver some of the CIA's mail...

[lazarus]

18. Nice selective quoting

Name me a large military contractor that hasn't had some legal troubles with the government.

And, yes, relative to Halliburton and CG, they're much less evil.

And, finally, a point you didn't get. What I meant was, everyone seems to think that SAIC is evil, but nobody's able to point out why. The assumption is simply there, because they're big and they do business with the government.

[deminflorida]

2. Hey watch it bubba, I used to work for SAIC.....

The company is called Science Applications International Corp. Don't worry they're extremly reputable. One of the best and largest government contractors in the business. If if makes you feel any better, they have held government contracts for years, (especially during the Clinton Administration when they really went into expansion). They are probably the largest employee owned Research and Development Corp. in America. I don't think they would do anything do jeopardize their status concerning government contracts thru any type of hanky-panky. They're headquarted out of San Diego, Cal. and they are extremly respected by the IT community in this country as well as internationally.

Company Overview

"Founded by Dr. J.R. Beyster and a small group of scientists in 1969, SAIC, a Fortune 500® company, now ranks as the largest employee-owned research and engineering firm in the nation. SAIC and its subsidiaries have more than 41,000 employees with offices in over 150 cities worldwide."

[DrBB]

13. And spelled backwards....

Sorry to hit the conspiracy button--just joking really. But they DO do a lot of contract work for what is endearingly referred to as The Company, to the extent that some people have made a joke about spelling the acronym backwards. And adding an apostrophe of course.

But hey, my wife used to work for Mitre, and I know you don't have to be a conspiratorial organization to be in the pocket of the Pentagon....
:)

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lazarus]

23. Then you don't know anything about SAIC

If you think it's anything like Dyncorp, or is a mercenary firm. Go back and do some more research.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Here's another one

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH16Ak02.html

<snip>

Less well known is San Diego-based Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), one of the Pentagon's largest, most lucrative and politically connected contractors. Of the six billion dollars it earned in revenue last year, about two thirds came from the US Treasury, mostly from the defense budget.

SAIC is among the most mysterious and feared of the big 10 defense giants - feared because of its ruthlessness in procuring contracts, says the Washington Post; mysterious, in part because, as an employee-owned company, it does not have to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and because its press officers are notorious for not providing information. Indeed, for this article, SAIC press officers referred all questions to the Pentagon's general press office.

<snip>

The Iraqi (sometimes referred to as "Indigenous") Media Network (IMN) project, valued initially at a minimum of US$25 million, was formally launched in mid-April as a successor to a psychological warfare program that beamed radio broadcasts before and during the war into Iraq from a C130 cargo plane called "Commando Solo".
But the IMN was considerably more ambitious in scope, since its aim, as an outgrowth of the IRDC operation, was to put together a new information ministry, complete with television, radio and a newspaper, and the content that would make all three attractive to average Iraqis.

<snip>

"SAIC didn't have any suitable qualification to run a media network," according to Rohan Jayasekera, who has kept an eye on media developments in Iraq for London-based Index on Censorship. "The whole thing was so incredibly badly planned by them that no one could make sense of what they were doing," he said.



So much for reliability.

[lazarus]

9. Most feared?

Ruthless? How dare they actually compete for business, those bastards.

Actually, SAIC built the facility, but isn't running the programming. That's why the Pentagon is still looking for companies to bid on it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0346/cotts.php

From the looks of the articles I've read so far, it looks like SAIC got stuck with a lot more than it contracted for, including programming, so of course it's not working out.

Besides, I thought they were feared and ruthless. How can they be so feared and ruthless and efficient, and yet be bumbling incompetents at the same time? :shrug:

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. That was a quote from the Washington Post

However, the fact that SAIC received millions of dollars in a no bid contract in Iraq and so far has little to show for it, seems to be a pattern among all the FOBs you are privatizing Iraq.

BTW: Where does SAIC keep their money? Bermuda or the Cayman Islands?

[lazarus]

19. where do they keep their money?

They keep their money in their employee's pockets, for the most part.

The point is, they appear to be both an evil organisation that's about to take over the world, and an incompetent bumbling collection of idiots that can't even run a tv station. Still trying to figure out how that works. :shrug:

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. There are 1000's of companies

that are good at something and make it big, then they diversify and they fall apart because they get into businesses that they don't know much about. It usually happens when the powers that be, get too greedy and things get out of control. Very often they end up selling off these side businesses and go back to what they were good at to begin with.

Unfortunately, in the case of the Iraq contracts, these mistakes are costing us (ie American taxpayer) billions of dollars and are bankrupting our economy in the process.

[lazarus]

22. In this case

It looks quite obvious that SAIC got stuck with a lot more than they contracted for, and are quite likely not happy with it. It happens more than you'd believe in the government contracting business.

[OldSoldier]

24. I've dealt with SAIC. They're good folks.

Another good bunch to work with is Unisys. The computer people.

Unisys is the first company I ever heard of that went to Congress to lobby against its own self-interest. This is a good tale and bears repeating.

In the 1970s, the Navy decided to install smaller mainframes in some of their ships. The computer was called AN/UYK-7 and Sperry, after proper competitive bidding between the two companies that made mainframes at the time, received the job of producing a thousand computers. They went to work and whipped up a real nice little box. Then they analyzed the machine based on their extensive experience with shipboard systems, called the Navy and told them a thousand wasn't going to be enough--it's a nice computer, you'll like it, you'll think of all sorts of things to do with it, go back to Congress, ask for this amount and we can do 2000 of these for not much more than you're paying for the thousand you're already getting. A lot of the expense of the AN/UYK-7 was in R&D, and by ordering a thousand more you spread that bill around some. No, no, said the Navy, a thousand will be plenty.

Six months later, the Navy realized Sperry was right; all of a sudden they needed another thousand and options on a third batch. Said Sperry, fine, we told you so, but that's okay because now that you've paid for your design, we can whip up another batch for many thousands per unit less. The navy was happy, they put in their request and got shot down by Congress. There was, at the time, a law that required they pay at least the same amount per unit on subsequent contracts, and that R&D had to be calculated into the price of the items in the initial batch. So we had to buy the R&D twice. (The intent was to keep government buyers from squeezing the vendors every time they bought something.)

They went to Congress over that. The law was amended to require R&D costs per unit in the initial batch to be broken out separate from the price so the taxpayer wouldn't have to fund it twice.