Let's not forget that SAIC is runned by people connected to CIA, Pentagon and in other ways linked to the US government.
The old PDVSA outsourced the information technology with highly important and classified information about the venezuelan oil industry to the NEO-CONS in Washington.
Shame on them!
More info on SAIC
Its current board of directors includes former NSA chief Bobby
Inman, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and the former head of
research and development for the Pentagon, Donald Hicks. Ex-CIA
director Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense William Perry and CIA
Director John Deutsch have been past SAIC board members. Eighty three
percent of SAIC's $2 billion annual revenue comes from government
contracts, including defense, intelligence, and law enforcement
contracts. SAIC is designing new information systems for the Pentagon,
helping to automate the FBI's computerized fingerprint identification
system, and last year won a $200 million contract to provide
"information support" to the IRS.
http://www.inti.be/hammer/on-saic.htm
I think Roberto Guisti, the president of PDVSA immediately prior to Chavez coming to power and firing him, was a part owner of INTESA. The amount of insider dealing in the old PDVSA was stunning and would be completely illegal in the United States. So much for the old PDVSA being a world class organization.
OW--it seems clear to me that the Venezuelan governement would have a solid legal case against INTESA--but, of course, politics trumps legality in this instance. At least one billion dollars was lost due to withholding passwords and associated sabatoge.
About free software: yes, there is a huge ideological component to the notion of keeping the basic coding of these programs open for all. This is in keeping with the core component of human evolution--the creative aspect of our nature. Controlling, owning, and selling the code stifles innovation and helps bolster oligarchies.
Indeed, this is very abstract in how it plays out (imperfectly) in the real world, but there are real connections between the basic logic/modus operandi of how things are created and how they stifle or benefit the majority of humankind.
One of my customers is a computer science professor--he is way cool, very respected in his field, and an advocate for opensource. (I think that when I mentioned Stallman and the free software movment during our origional meeting that that swayed him to do business with our company.)
More, I think that there are huge opprotunties using computers to increase the viability of cultural productions, stories, and the flow of information among people coming togehter to fight oppressions of all types. Especially pertaining to the corporate media in all nations--the revolution in computer technology allow everyday people to escape the thrall of the oligarchy.
But his entails being producers of information, not just passive consumers (as with television).
I don't know nearly enough about open-source software to comment on that (I'm just not that much of a geek), but I'm not at all surprised that WinDoze was a factor in the sabotage--it frankly BLOWS. (Which is why I love my Mac.)
I'm also not surprised at the CIA connections and the insider trading at the old PDVSA (which damn near became CIASA, I'll bet.) Somehow, this is all just so in pattern for them.
"developing computer mechanisms to support greater citizen-participation in governance and greater transparency of public agencies; broadening the base of local software developers to avoid the kind of one-source-of-IT-expertise situation that allowed the PDVSA sabotage;"
So if they´re promoting great citizen participation and great transparency why is Venezuela´s new computerised voting system, run by the Smartmatic company, so intransparent?
Its not. Everyone who has reviewed it - the Carter Center, the OAS, and the European Union - have considered it to be very good with safeguards that rival any system in the world. Certainly voting and the vote tabulation and review is much more transparent in Venezuela than in the U.S.
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