IT at the CIA

neocon writes "The current issue of the CIA's Studies in Intelligence (unclassified edition, natch) has an article on the state of IT within the CIA, titled 'Failing to Keep Up With the Information Revolution', which looks at how the agency has fared in staying up to date both with information security needs and with promising new technologies."

more info on In-Q-Tel

[ih8apple]

Are you guys familiar with In-Q-Tel [in-q-tel.com]? (It's mentioned in the article)

Here's an article [wired.com].
and another [atnewyork.com]...
and another [usatoday.com]...
and another [washingtonpost.com]...

SAIC

[lpret]

I was just reading an article in Business 2.0 (yes, I try to help out where I can) about a group called SAIC [saic.com] that does a lot of data mining and management for the CIA as well as many other aspects of the government. Apparently they do quite a bit of the security aspect of the CIA as well. Now if only they'd go public, their stock would be incredible...

Re:firewall? we don't need no stinkin' firewall!

[SirWhoopass]

The systems don't "run Windows" any more than computers on the internet "run Windows". The OS is entirely up to the person using it. A lot of the classified systems run unix.

Re:CIA overthrows dictatorships

[Anonymous Coward]

> The CIA is actually known for overthrowing military dictatorships, and helping countries fend off invaders.

Well, they're also well known for stupid shit like back in 1973 when then they overthrew the democratic government of Chile. It was replaced it with a dictatorship. You've heard of Gen. Pinochet, right..?

Mass arrests, summary executions, torture, "disappearances"..

Re:Try it if you dare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who built the net in the first place?

It wasn't the CIA. It wasn't even, for the most part, the government, though it was originally funded by the government.