War & Disaster Profiteering

An independent ombudsman has confirmed that World Bank officials should have raised serious questions before the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the private sector arm of the World Bank - approved a $30 million loan to Corporación Dinant in Honduras in 2009 for palm oil plantation projects. Read More

Global Response Staff is a new unit set up by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) to hire private security contractors to accompany dangerous spying missions. Unlike Jason Bourne - the fictional character on which they appear to be modeled on - this gang cannot shoot straight. Read More

Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm, has bought up 200,000 houses in cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown. They hope to profit by renting homes to poor people and securitizing the cash flow - the very plan that caused the crisis in the first place. Read More

Article in German about how Silicon Valley has profited out of the NSA. (Wenn sich die Entrüstung über den NSA-Skandal gelegt hat, wird die IT-Branche Kassensturz machen. Und feststellen: Die Aufregung hat sich gelohnt.) Read More

What was Mostapha Maanna of Hacking Team, an Italian surveillance company, doing on his three trips to Saudi Arabia in the last year? A new data trove from WikiLeaks reveals travel details for salesmen like Maanna who hawk electronic technology to track communications by individuals without their knowledge Read More

Turkmenistan and Oman have been negotiating with a consortium of British, German and Swiss companies to buy "FinFisher" software to spy on phone calls and Internet activity of unsuspecting targets, according to a new trove of documents just released by Wikileaks, the global whistleblowing organization. Read More

Glimmerglass, a northern California company that sells optical fiber technology, offers government agencies a software product called "CyberSweep" to intercept signals on undersea cables. The company says their technology can analyze Gmail and Yahoo! Mail as well as social media like Facebook and Twitter to discover "actionable intelligence." Read More

Egyptian security forces launched a massive crackdown on pro-democracy protestors killing around 300 people this morning. Despite near universal condemnation for the violence, the U.S. government has refused cut off the multi-billion dollar aid program that pays companies to provide support to the Egyptian government. Read More

The family of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan refugee in the UK, has brought a civil lawsuit against G4S, the world's largest private security company. Mubenga died on October 12, 2010 while being restrained by G4S guards who were hired to help deport him from the country. Read More

Military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton is in the news over two of its former employees: Edward Snowden, the whistleblower, and James Clapper, U.S. intelligence czar. A review of Booz Allen's own high level conflicts of interest and shoddy work suggests that Congress should target the company, not the messenger. Read More