‘Digital Blackwater’: Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data

June 12th, 2013

Via: Salon:

From Narus, the Israeli-born Boeing subsidiary that makes NSA’s high-speed interception software, to CSC, the “systems integrator” that runs NSA’s internal IT system, defense and intelligence, contractors are making millions of dollars selling technology and services that help the world’s largest surveillance system spy on you. If the 70 percent figure is applied to the NSA’s estimated budget of $8 billion a year (the largest in the intelligence community), NSA contracting could reach as high as $6 billion every year.

But it’s probably much more than that.

“The largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” says Michael V. Hayden, who oversaw the privatization effort as NSA director from 1999 to 2005. He was referring not to the NSA itself but to the business park about a mile down the road from the giant black edifice that houses NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. There, all of NSA’s major contractors, from Booz to SAIC to Northrop Grumman, carry out their surveillance and intelligence work for the agency.

With many of these contractors now focused on cyber-security, Hayden has even coined a new term — “Digital Blackwater” – for the industry. “I use that for the concept of the private sector in cyber,” he told a recent conference in Washington, in an odd reference to the notorious mercenary army. “I saw this in government and saw it a lot over the last four years. The private sector has really moved forward in terms of providing security,” he said. Hayden himself has cashed out too: He is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, the intelligence advisory company led by Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of Homeland Security.

Research Credit: conceptualdecay

4 Responses to “‘Digital Blackwater’: Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data”

  1. Eileen says:

    Somehow or other the words from Romeo and Juliet came to me tonight. Two houses. Let us use the names CIA and NSA instead of Capulet and ….(Memory lapse).
    Both the NSA and CIA budgets are black:eg there is no transparency. And then comes sequestration, and in the darknesss of clandestine government, one or the other of these two houses learns that their budgets must be cut. Oh such drama, Send in the whistleblower, aka, Mr. Snowden who blows the NSA cover of the spy network. Only that this program has been in existence for any and all with eyes to see, and brains to grok know that this seething snake of spying on citizens all over the great Planet Earth has been in existence since Richard Nixon’s administration, or maybe before that?
    The question now is who is more in cahoots with the Israeli’s – the NSA or the CSA? I wonder. Only the gunpowder, or the thermmite traces on the World Trade Center know for sure. Hey Verizon, do you hear me now? Yea verily, who in the CIA seeks to blow the NSA up? Its hilarious. Let us hide and watch. This is really getting interesting.

  2. Eileen says:

    aargh, the two houses are Montague and Capulet. Darn it.

  3. Eileen says:

    I also have a typo to correct- should be CIA instead of CSA. OOPS. Must be the red vitamins kicking in. Finally. Damn.

  4. ENERGYMAN says:

    It is funny that I was reading some info just the other day about Michael Aquino, who just so happens to LACK a Wikipedia entry, and his association with Michael Hayden. If you don’t know the name Michael Aquino, please look it up…. especially in relation to the scandal at the military kindergarten school, the NAZI occult ceremony involving the SS and Hayden, and Michael Aquino’s role in the PSYOPS program for the U.S. military.

    Aquino’s program calls for complete mental domination of one’s enemy, convincing them that it is futile to fight because there is absolutely no chance for success.

    P.S. why the f@$% is there no WIKI entry for Michael Aquino?

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