Lawsuit claims CIA uses pirate software in drone assassinations

Predator drone

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Central Intelligence Agency is using stolen software code in its covert Predator drone assassination program in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a lawsuit filed by a software company in the US state of Massachusetts. The software company, Intelligent Integration Systems, Inc. (IISi), which is based in Boston, accuses the CIA of unlawfully using proprietary coding, purchased through Netezza Corporation, a former partner of IISi. The latter claims Netezza sold the CIA a software application called Spatial, which the CIA uses to perform targeted killings through its unmanned drone program. But IISi alleges that Spatial contains stolen coding initially developed by its programmers. What is more, the company claims that the pirated coding is in fact defective, and that the CIA runs the risk of its unmanned Predator drone strikes “being off by about 40 feet”. In a court deposition, Richard Zimmerman, IISi’s senior technology officer, described his “amazement” that the CIA “want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work”.  The CIA’s unmanned drone assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are part of one of the agency’s most controversial covert programs in recent years. Last May, speaking before the National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a number of prominent American legal scholars warned that the killings may constitute war crimes. IntelNews regulars will know that this website has consistently questioned the legality of such extrajudicial assassinations. However, US State Department legal adviser Harold Koh told a conference in March that “the considered view of th[e] Obama administration” is that the CIA-operated drone attacks inside Pakistan “comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war”.