uunet!PROCASE.COM!peb (Paul Baclace) writes:

The CIA has been accused of stealing a company's source code and reselling said software modified with a trojan horse to specific targets outside the U.S. I don't remember the name of the company, but read about the lawsuit pending against the government. Anyone have more details? This is nice evidence for people who think the spooks are fully accountable.

This sounds like the Inslaw thing - a company called Inslaw sold some software for case management and person-tracking (intended for use by prosecuting attorneys for maintaining dossiers, etc.) to the Justice department. Then (the story goes) the Justice department deliberately failed to make agreed-upon payments and screwed around with Inslaw's cash flow to the point that they were forced into choosing between bankruptcy and selling out to another software company owned by cronies of Ed Meese. They chose bankruptcy and subsequently sued the Justice Department. The first judge who heard the case ruled in Inslaw's favor was not reappointed to his seat. I'm unable to remember the specifics of the following events - and the above summary probably leaves out important stuff. I've got a few text files on this - if folks are interested I can upload them to the soda archives. This is also related to the "suicide" of writer Danny Casolaro about 2 years ago in Washington, D.C. - he was working on a book on this mess, supposedly discovered something pretty important, then allegedly killed himself. Conspiracy stuff abounds with this. Supposedly the PROMIS software has also been given to Canadian intelligence/police forces, as well as the Israelis. It's a pretty sordid story and frankly I dunno how much of it to believe. I don't know if this is exactly relevant to Cypherpunk stuff (and it's long) so I'm not posting it to the list, but I can mail or ftp the stuff to interested folks. -- Greg Broiles greg@goldenbear.com Golden Bear Computer Consulting +1 503 465 0325 Box 12005 Eugene OR 97440 BBS: +1 503 687 7764