

Apple Snags Former Defense Contractor for Board Position - adeelarshad82
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372885,00.asp

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variety
Some of Northrop Grumman's more interesting accomplishments under Ronald
Sugar's tenure:

Acting as goodwill ambassadors to the people of Iraq:

 _Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary, Vinnell Corporation, has been catching a lot
of flack lately. They landed a $48 million contract with the US occupational
authority to train the Iraqi National Army, but have botched the job so badly
that the Jordanian Army has recently been brought in to take over the job._

[http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=11](http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=11)

Lobbying Congress on the Armenia genocide bill:

 _Corporate America typically hires lobbyists to pressure Congress on taxes
and trade rules. But in an unusual -- some say risky -- move, five military
contractors and an energy company have stepped into a fight over whether the
U.S. should label Turkey's slaughter of a million Armenians nearly a century
ago as genocide._

 _The six companies have strong ties to Turkey, a key strategic ally of the
U.S. in Mideast peace efforts and the fight against terrorism. None would
state their position on the House resolution, but industry analysts and others
said they likely lobbied against the measure to show support for Turkey, an
important market for weapons and industrial products._

 _"They don't want to be seen opposing a resolution that has a very evident
human rights element," said Rouben Adalian, director of the Armenian National
Institute, a Washington research organization. "It would put them on the side
of denying history and denying genocide."_

<http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15404>

Helping the Pentagon build (probably illegal) databases of "suspect domestic
activity" like anti-war protests:

 _Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency,
Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a
domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to
potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting
mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report.
TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military
units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA
database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military
bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the
program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The
database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field
Activity._

 _CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national
security community. Its operational and analytical records include reports of
investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits,
correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or
analytical efforts by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify
terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33
million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation,
Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that
comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial
information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and
spies._

 _One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman
and dubbed "Person Search," is designed "to provide comprehensive information
about people of interest." It will include the ability to search government as
well as commercial databases. Another project, "The Insider Threat
Initiative," intends to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and
investigate insider threats," as well as the ability to "identify and document
normal and abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,’" according to the Computer
Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based
defense contractor seeks to develop methods "to track and monitor activities
of suspect individuals."_

<http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=4038>

