Contractual Dispute Leads To Claims Of CIA Using Hacked, Faulty Software To Mistarget Bombs

from the well,-isn't-that-nice dept

One important lesson I've heard from lawyers over and over again in cautioning companies who are too eager to sue: when you open up a lawsuit to discovery, be aware that discovery works both ways. Take, for example, the bizarre lawsuit highlighted by The Register, between Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi) and Netezza, the data warehousing company IBM just announced it's trying to buy. Apparently, IISi makes a product called Geospatial that datamines information to determine location. It works on Netezza's NPS platform, and the two companies had a relationship, but Netezza sued IISi for refusing to modify Geospatial to work on its updated appliance, TwinFin.

The details all flowed out during the legal dispute, and it doesn't make Netezza or the CIA look very good. The CIA? Oh, we hadn't mentioned them? It seems they were the key to the whole issue. Netezza apparently did a deal with the CIA to provide some TwinFin appliances with Geospatial, which could be used (allegedly, allegedly) to help predator drones pinpoint where to drop bombs to kill people. Only problem? Geospatial doesn't work on TwinFin, and Netezza didn't want to lose the sale. Apparently after some back and forth between Netezza and IISi, where Netezza revealed the client and the importance of this -- and IISi pointing out that it just wasn't that easy to port the software and keep it accurate -- IISi claims that Netezza went ahead and modified the software on its own -- and the CIA used it, even though everyone admitted that it wasn't particularly accurate at times -- sometimes being off by as much as 13 meters.

Of course, much of that came out as part of the discovery process after Netezza sued IISi for refusing to do the update. As that went on, IISi learned more about how Netezza apparently decided to make its own version of Geospatial, and is now suing back. The original case of Netezza suing IISi? That got dismissed, as IISi had no contractual obligation to port its software... but the lawsuit itself seems to have dragged all sorts of dirty laundry out into public, including the fact that our predator drones might not be very accurate, and the CIA might have knowingly used buggy software.

Filed Under: cia, hacking, predator drones
Companies: iisi, netezza