Every Silicon Valleyite's favorite buzzword -- innovation -- has been picked up by the CIA.
The Central Intelligence Agency announced publicly on Friday that -- as part of one of the largest agency makeovers since its founding in 1947 -- it's creating a new top-level directorate called the Directorate of Digital Innovation.
The FBI is evaluating separate criminal referrals sent to the Justice Department by the CIA in its dispute with Senate investigators over access to documents about the agency's "enhanced interrogation" practices, officials familiar with the matter said.
The CIA and one of its two main congressional overseers, the Senate Intelligence Committee, have traded accusations that each inappropriately intruded into computer systems containing highly classified data about the Bush-era practices, which human rights activists have described as torture.
Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVGY) has turned to national security insiders to win U.S. approval to buy Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Motorola Mobility phone unit and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s low-end server business, people familiar with the two deals said.
AT&T is paid $10 million annually by the CIA to share call data, reports The Times. Such deals are likely to complicate a Vodafone acquisition.
AT&T is paid more than $10 million a year to help the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with its "overseas counterterrorism investigations," The New York Times reported Nov. 7. AT&T has a voluntary contract with the CIA, and is "not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate," said the report, citing government officials.
One of the CIA's highest-ranking women, who once ran a CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded, has been bypassed for the agency's top spy job.
The officer, who remains undercover, was a finalist for the job and would have become the first female chief of clandestine operations.
FCW, a federal IT blog, reported yesterday that its sources confirmed that the CIA has inked a deal with Amazon, agreeing to a cloud computing contract “worth up to $600 million over 10 years.” These sources suggested to FCW that Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud network so that it can “keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts.”
The cia.gov site was unavailable around 3.50pm ET, allegedly due to a Denial of Service(DDS)-attack from hackers affiliated with the group UGNazi.
The site block was initially claimed by Anonymous after the group tweeted: "CIA TANGO DOWN", but later it admitted fellow hacktivists UGNazi had instead brought down the site.
By 6pm cia.gov was back up and running. The CIA did not confirm the attack but said they were "looking into these reports". Hacktivists also reportedly attacked the website for the United Nations.
