U.S. Reviewing 2nd Dubai Firm

[cal04]

Israeli Deal Also Faces Security Check


The Bush administration, stung by the public outcry over the Dubai port deal, has launched a national security investigation of another Dubai-owned company set to take over plants in Georgia and Connecticut that make precision components used in engines for military aircraft and tanks. The administration notified congressional committees this week that its secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is investigating the security implications of Dubai International Capital's $1.2 billion acquisition of London-based Doncasters Group Ltd., which has subsidiaries in the United States. It is also investigating an Israeli company's plans to buy the Maryland software security firm Sourcefire, which does business with Defense Department agencies

Administration officials are privately briefing leaders of half a dozen House and Senate committees this week about the two planned transactions, concerned that both deals could stir controversy in a political climate that remains supercharged over the Dubai port deal. Republican and Democratic lawmakers angrily protested after learning late last month that the administration had approved a $6.8 billion deal to allow a maritime company based in the United Arab Emirates to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports without a thorough investigation and without consulting members of Congress. Last weekend, the Dubai maritime company agreed to a 45-day investigation to stem the protest and allay concerns of a possible breach of U.S. port security.

In the past, the foreign investment committee rarely told Congress of such inquiries. Wary of another misstep, administration officials decided to inform lawmakers of the two other pending transactions with national security implications for the United States. There have been suggestions in the trade press that the publicly traded Israeli firm, Check Point Software Technologies, has been subjected to more scrutiny than Dubai Ports World, the state-owned Arab company that was initially cleared to take over operations at the six major U.S. ports with no security investigation. That inquiry was initiated only after an outcry about turning over port security to a country that has been cited for ties to terrorism.

Sources familiar with the Israeli investigation said cybersecurity officials at the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security all raised serious concerns about the purchase before the port controversy erupted. Dubai International Capital's acquisition of Doncasters could present some of the same political problems created by Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. Once again, a state-controlled Dubai company with deep pockets is purchasing a British firm with U.S. holdings. Doncasters has operations in nine U.S. locations and manufactures precision parts for defense contractors such as Boeing, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030102192.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Free trade and national security cannot co-exist in absolute forms.

Something has to give. We can't trust Israel, we can't trust Arab countries that have close ties with terrorists. This is a no brainer.

[peacetalksforall]

2. Can someone quick draw a map of the U.S. and start showing the

holes from the selling of our country? The foreigners are holding the chisel and certain U.S. government employees hold the hammer and use it.

For those U.S. supremicists - tell us again how we are the greatest country in the world.

[Divine Discontent]

3. here we go AGAIN!!!!!!!!!

"Dubai-owned company set to take over plants in Georgia and Connecticut that make precision components used in engines for military aircraft and tanks."



WHAT???????????? (faints)






www.cafepress.com/bushsoldamerica

[rodeodance]

4. good, the secret committee is spooked.

[OKNancy]

5. Kick

[shugah]

6. Dubai Seeks U.S. Approval for Military-Parts Maker

Dubai Seeks U.S. Approval for Military-Parts Maker

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Dubai, facing opposition to its takeover of terminals at six U.S. ports, said it's seeking approval for the acquisition of a U.K. engineering company with plants in the U.S. that make components for military aircraft.

U.S. authorities have begun a national security investigation into Dubai International Capital LLC's takeover of Doncasters Group Ltd., the Washington Post reported today, citing officials. Doncasters has plants in Rincon, Georgia; Groton, Connecticut, and other U.S. locations that make parts for planes and helicopters.

Dubai International, a private equity company controlled by the emirate's ruling al-Maktoum family, is ``pursuing all appropriate U.S. regulatory approvals'' for the $1.2 billion acquisition of Melbourne, England-based Doncasters, a spokeswoman for Dubai International said.

Dubai's $6.8 billion takeover of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers amid concern that giving control of some port facilities to DP world will threaten national security. Dubai is one of seven sheikdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates, where two of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came from.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aIX4uEz8BTWc&refer=us

[flamingpie2500]

7. My question is why is the U.K. selling off all of these companies to Dubai

[anotherdrew]

9. damn good question. Too bad we don't have a media, just a PR system.

would love to know why the hell they are selling all these profitable enterprises to an operation that will take all the profits out of Brittan.

[anotherdrew]

8. why don't any american companies want to buy these profitable businesses?

why would a state owned foreign company even be considered? Something is rotten here.

[fasttense]

10. This is what happens when you sell off your manufacturing and distribution

to foreign companies, even true allies. They can turn around and sell it to your enemies or just leave you high and dry when they shift policy. Free trade gone wild has never helped any country, only some wealthy citizens.

[cal04]

11. Second UAE Company Confirms U.S. Probe

A second United Arab Emirates company, Dubai International Capital LLC, confirmed Thursday that the U.S. has launched a national security investigation into one of its acquisitions. Dubai International Capital in December announced a $1.2 billion deal to buy Doncasters Group Ltd., a British precision-engineering company with subsidiaries in the United States that make components used in engines for military aircraft and tanks.

Despite the probe, the company said it's confident the deal will still close. ''Dubai International Capital is pursuing all proper U.S. regulatory approvals regarding the acquisition of Doncasters Group Ltd. as is customary for international business transactions of this nature,'' Dubai International Capital said in a statement.

''It is confident of obtaining those approvals and closing the transaction as originally envisioned,'' the company said.

The Washington Post reported earlier Thursday that the Bush administration had notified congressional committees this week that the White House's secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is investigating the security implications of Dubai International Capital's acquisition. The new investigation follows another recent U.S. probe into Dubai-based DP World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. and the national security implications of the Arab company running several U.S. ports.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Dubai-International-Capital.html

[Earth_First]

12. Perhaps they are second guessing the strength of the economy?

That all might not be well with the U.S. economy, and this may be a bad business venture?

[HereSince1628]

13. .

[Moderator]

14. Kick

[Wordie]

15. U.S. panel (CIFIUS) objects to software handover to Israeli company

The CIFIUS committee has notified an Israeli software company that it faces a 45-day investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival. US officials informed the company of their concern that the acquisition could result in a dangerous vulnerability regarding the most sensitive government computer systems.

U.S. panel objects to software handover to Israeli company
By The Associated Press

...The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.

...In private meetings between the panel and Check Point, officials from the FBI and U.S. Defense Department objected forcefully to permitting any foreign company to acquire some sensitive Sourcefire technology for preventing hacker break-ins and monitoring data traffic, an executive familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press. This executive spoke on condition of anonymity because government negotiations are supposed to remain confidential.

..."This raises a lot more important issues," said Reinsch, a former Commerce Department undersecretary. "The most important case is where we're making an irrevocable technology transfer to a foreign party. Port operations raise security issues, but the ports are still in the United States."

...Still, Sourcefire earned about 10 percent of its estimated $35 million in revenues last year guarding classified U.S. computers, according to Jeffrey W. Englander, a software security analyst at Boston-based America's Growth Capital, a boutique investment bank and research firm.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/689506.html

[htuttle]

16. Snort is open source -- it's under GPL -- they can't sell the rights to it

http://www.snort.org/about_snort/licenses/gpl.html

I don't understand this, either (from the article):

Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Maryland.

Snort was/is been developed by a whole team of people:

Marty Roesch Fyodor Yarochkin Dragos Ruiu Jed Pickel
Max Vision Michael Davis Joe McAlerney Joe Stewart
Erek Adams Roman Danyliw Christopher Cramer Frank Knobbe
Phil Wood Toby Kohlenberg Ramin Alidousti Jim Hankins
Dennis Hollingworth Paul Howell Stef Mit Ofir Arkin
Jason Haar Blake Frantz Lars Norman S?ndergaard Brent Erickson
Brian Caswell Scot Wiedenfeld Chris Green Jeff Wirth
Edin Dizdarevic Detmar Liesen Don Ng Matt Kettler
Joe Lyman Jim Burwell Jed Haile Andrew Hutchinson
Jeff Nathan Alberto Gonzalez Jason Haar Jeremy Hewlett


I don't understand why they think Sourcefire's patents come into play here -- they can't sell Snort, because they don't own Snort.

Is there some other commercial version of the same program they are talking about???

on edit:
No, here's how they describe Snort:

Sourcefire's protection and monitoring technology builds on the popularity of Snort, which was created by its chief technology officer and is distributed free. Unlike Sourcefire's commercial products, Snort's blueprints are open for inspection to assure it works as advertised. This makes it popular inside the U.S. intelligence community, even alongside more mainstream security products from Cisco Systems Inc. or Juniper Networks Inc.

So they are talking about the free one, but there seem to be a lot of people confused about Snort's relationship to Sourcefire. Once something is GPL'd it is GPL'd forever. You can't take it back or change the licensing later.

Am I missing something here? Or is this article (and the parties to the controversy) as confused and mistaken as they appear to be?

[Wordie]

17. I don't think that's really the issue...

Still, Sourcefire earned about 10 percent of its estimated $35 million in revenues last year guarding classified U.S. computers, according to Jeffrey W. Englander, a software security analyst at Boston-based America's Growth Capital, a boutique investment bank and research firm.

The issue appears to be that Sourcefire has contracts guarding classified U.S. computers, and if the deal went through, it would be an Israeli company taking over that function. At least that's how it appears to me. All that material about Snort was interesting, but I'm not certain it's really relevant to the CIFIUS issue.

[magellan]

18. They're an Israeli firm with US sales offices

...and check out who the US execs generously backed in '04! From Political Money Line:

1 . Munoz, Carlos Mr.
7/18/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60622
Check Point Software/Sales
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


2 . Munoz, Carlos Mr.
9/14/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60622
Check Point Software/Sales
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


3 . Munoz, Carlos Mr.
10/19/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60622
Check Point Software/Sales
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


4 . Munoz, Carlos Mr.
10/30/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60622
Check Point Software/Sales
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


5 . Munoz, Carlos Mr.
12/14/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60622
Check Point Software/Sales
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


6 . O'Connor, Tim
2/10/2004 $250.00
Chicago, IL 60626
Check Point Software/Engineer
JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT INC


7 . Sovereign, Scott
10/21/2004 $250.00
Kansas City, MO 64114
Check Point Software/Security Engin
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE


8 . Wolf, Albert E Mr.
4/26/2004 $25,000.00
Philadelphia, PA 19119
Check Point System/CEO
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE

[Coastie for Truth]

22. US Development Center

just down Oracle Parkway (and over a little lagoon) from Larry's glass towers in Redwood Shores CA

[magellan]

I saw that on Check Point's website

Moneyline didn't pick up any '04 contribs from the CA center though. Is it new?

[htuttle]

19. That would make sense

But there was a confusing line in the article:

The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.

That made me think it had something to do with who 'owned' snort.

[Coastie for Truth]

21. A bigger issue

is that most "American" intrusion detection software comes from Bangalore, Haifa, and Beijing -- NOT from Yorktown Heights NY or Redmond WA or Santa Clara CA.

The real threat is not from Israeli ownership or Indian ownership or PRC ownership. The real threat is from the absolutely massive "off shoring" of our software development and processor development industries.

[karynnj]

24. I agree - there are very many reasons why outsourcing

software development is a problem. In case you didn't see it, here is a NYT editorial from the NYT that is absolutely infuriating - it argues as there are more IT jobs now, that outsourcing IT jobs was not bad for the US. Reading it they equate jobs of people who form small businesses to fix people's home computers with the high technology software jobs we are losing. (Oddly this one editorial bothers me as much as their snarky 2004 campaign coverage - I really question where they are coming from.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/opinion/01wed3.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials&oref=slogin

[htuttle]

27. Remember this story? (from 12/23/01)

http://www.vmyths.com/rant.cfm_id=432&page=4.htm

A suspected member of the Al Qaeda terrorist network claimed that Islamic militants infiltrated Microsoft and sabotaged the company's Windows XP operating system... Mohammad Afroze Abdul Razzak, arrested by Mumbai (Bombay) police Oct. 2, ... claimed that a member or members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft and attempted to plant "trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP"...

British intelligence officials have dismissed the claims, according to a report last week in the Guardian, a British newspaper. A defense attorney hired by Afroze's father, a tailor by profession, reportedly asked the court to allow Afroze to receive a psychiatric examination but was rejected.

Afroze, who is scheduled to provide a formal confession before a Mumbai court on Tuesday, told the magistrate Friday that he does not wish legal representation and is mentally sound.

While it was generally regarded as a hoax, ie., that the person was lying, there's really no reason much of it couldn't have been true...(or could be true NOW).

[GregD]

20. Interesting - they own zonealarm

I recognized this company name immediately.

A couple years ago Checkpoint purchased the rights to http://www.checkpoint.com/products/consumer/ Zonealarm. I saw a warning here concerning that transaction, and while it might be silly overreaction, have never upgraded to a later version of their code ever since the acquisition.

What do people know (or think) about Zonealarm these days? Any alternates that (assuming folks are still uncomfortable with ZA) are a suitable firewall replacement?

[MrPrax]

25. How come...

this topic was combined with the above topic?

I use Snort all the time, BTW -- my laptop runs a Fedora-based distro called Blag...I use to run Whax (which is Israeli BTW) but they merged lately and I found the distro a little unstable...

Both are excellent 'administrative and security audit' tools!! ;-)

[Coastie for Truth]

23. Started in the late 1960's

:rant:

when the new generation of "go-go" MBA's moved into "management" -- and "Engineers" (crew cuts, horn rimmed glasses, plastic pocket protectors, slide rule holsters) became expendable.

"Born In the USA" engineering school enrollment crashed (I was an undergrad before VietNam - my class was 95% plus US citizens, I came back after the war and went to grad school, and my class was about 30% non-Citizens).

Then came the selling of consumer electronics "technology and know how" to Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and Singapore.

This was followed quickly by the emergence of "home grown" engineers and scientists and technology in the same Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and Singapore --- followed very quickly by "home grown" engineers and scientists and technology in Israel, India, and the PRC.

But to some extent this was actually preceded in the 1950's by arch-conservative management:

* The auto industry did not try to seriously meet the challenge of the VW - instead they responded with the Corvair (forgetting that suspension/vehicle stability and engine air cooling DO NOT SCALE LINEARLY.

* The steel industry did not see where their competitors were going
* The basic oxygen process was replacing the open hearth process - cheaper still and more recycling of scrap iron.
* More recycling of scrap meant less reliance on the expensive blast furnace process for iron.

My bottom line -- it is not "environmental regulations" or "product liability law suits" or "unions" or "work rules" that is killing/has killed our industrial infrastructure --- and made us ever more reliant on foreign sources -- it has been the complete and total failure of America's so-called business leaders to be on the leading edge of manufacturing technology.


:hi: - Yes I am an engineer - and 45 years ago I was complete with crew cut, horn rimmed glasses, plastic pocket protector, slide rule holster, and ripple sole shoes -- :hi:

:rant:

[htuttle]

26. Your description sounds familiar...

Never went berzerk on a bad day, did you? ;)

[Demeter]

28. He Really DID Sell The Country Off

The Onion yard sale was no satire.

[maddezmom]

29. kick

[Scurrilous]

30. U.S. panel objects to software handover to Israeli company

<snip>

"The same Bush administration review panel that approved a ports deal involving the United Arab Emirates has notified a leading Israeli software company that it faces a rare, full-blown investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival.

The company was told U.S. officials feared the transaction could endanger some of government's most sensitive computer systems.

The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.

Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Maryland."

more

[Kagemusha]

31. I honesty think this is a more legit issue than the port hysteria

With ports, there's federal agencies with security responsibilities guarding the henhouse. Here, once the deal's made there's basically no way to control anything. While it's not in the UAE's interests to support terrorism through shipping companies, it is quite arguably in the interests of Israel to have back doors into American intrusion detection software.

Perhaps the Israeli soon to be parent has made software to try and break through this detection software? I wouldn't know. I would hope someone on this panel either knows or will find out. And so on. With the ports there's Big Brother watching an entry and exit point for physical cargo. Once the physical stuff goes outside the country, the US will simply never know what's going on, in theory.

More questions to resolve, anyway. Even if the politics are "better".

[NYC]

32. A foreign country making parts for military aircraft and tanks.

A foreign country transports our military equipment.

Seems such an odd thing to do. Outsourcing self defense.

[truthisfreedom]

33. bwa-ha-ha-hah-hah-hahhhh!!!!

i love it. i love it when they squirm.

i love it when big money is exposed for what it is.