To Whom it May Concern:
Please note the attached text clipped from "Raiders of the Last Arc" from New Haven Advocate.
http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/articles/raiders.html
I think it most troubling that the registration of .com, .org and .net -- *together with * .edu -- have been in the hands of NSI -- and that NSI is basically run by SAIC, widely known to be a contractor of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Link this objectionable relationship with the statement of NSI's spokesperson at the Los Angeles Internet meeting of two weeks ago that NSI drafted (much of?) the Green Paper.
What do we have? Control of the Internet by the CIA and FBI.
Oh, yes, the Green Paper (NSI) plan also proposes that IANA be kept in the United States where it, too, remains accessible to the CIA and FBI.
Then we have the recent revelation that the Bay of Pigs disaster was (miss)-engineered by the CIA. This outfit has run amok. There are likely to be many other revelations in the future of improper activities by the CIA.
Let's get the Internet out from under the control of "Big Brother". :-)
Here's a quote from the New Haven Advocate:
Spooks Unearth The Ark
As Network Solutions was moving the Ark to Virginia, a giant California
military contractor was going on a buying spree.
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is headquartered
in an affluent seaside town just north of San Diego. From the outside, the
company's well-manicured corporate campus looks like any other. But
inside, armed guards are posted in front of doors that bristle with
high-tech locks, and lead-lined rooms hinder would-be electronic
eavesdroppers.
SAIC is a tightly held company that earns roughly $2 billion a year,
nearly all of it from federal contracts. The company designed computers
for Seawolf submarines and cockpit systems for F-15 fighter jets. It
spent $50 million researching President Reagan's failed "Star Wars"
anti-missile defense scheme, and is spending more than $500 million
building an underground nuclear garbage dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Even more impressive than the scale of SAIC's work is the pedigree of
its directors. Every president since Nixon has had at least one SAIC
insider in his cabinet. The unparalleled lineup includes former defense
secretaries William Perry and Melvin Laird, as well as ex-CIA directors
Robert Gates, Bobby Inman and John Deutch.
By the mid-'90s, SAIC was sitting on a mountain of profit but facing a
downsized Pentagon. Determined to transform itself from Cold War
contractor into high-tech competitor, SAIC went looking for companies
to acquire.
Network Solutions was struggling to keep up with the swelling demand
for Internet addresses. There were only about 7,500 computers on the
entire network when the InterNIC was created. But by early 1995,
Network Solutions was adding that many new registrations a month.
SAIC bought the company in March 1995 and promptly showed
Network Solutions how to do business with the government. Rather than
merely asking the National Science Foundation for an extra million
dollars every few months -- as Network Solutions had been doing --
SAIC renegotiated the whole deal.
The company won permission to charge $100 for each new domain
name. The proposal's raison d'être, however, was SAIC's agreement to
kick back a vigorish of $30 per domain name to a government "Internet
infrastructure fund."
Despite groans from the Internet community, registrations of new domain
names skyrocketed. Network Solutions sold a record 489,000 names in
1996 and another 960,000 last year.
SAIC also perfected Network Solutions' in-house systems to the point
that the company could sign up 90 percent of its new $100 customers
"without human intervention," according to federal documents filed by the
company.
With business booming and costs low, SAIC took Network Solutions
public. Last September, the company sold 21.5 percent of "NSOL" on
the Nasdaq stock exchange, raising nearly $60 million.
Buried deep within Network Solutions' filing with the federal Securities
and Exchange Commission was this sentence: "The NSF has stated that
the Cooperative Agreement will not be re-awarded to the Company." In
other words, SAIC was selling $60 million worth of a company that was
going to lose its monopoly in just six months' time.
I consider myself to be a loyal U.S. citizen. However, I believe that these kinds of excesses by the largely uncontrolled CIA must be stopped. Let's stop right here with the NSI/SAIC/CIA engineered Green Paper.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert F. Connelly
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