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| "Don't make us ask you again Mr Murphy, how many people are living in your house?" |
In the UK, there has been a proactive government campaign to promote this massive national stock-take. The BBC has clearly been pressed into service, and dutiful Auntie has been promoting the census diligently; casually in talk shows and also by running a series of documentaries on the centenary of the 1911 Census. And natch, we all filled out our forms last Sunday like good little beancounters.
Elephant in the room
Over the water in Ireland, it’s also Census year. And, confirmed sceptic that I am, I find it kinda life-affirming that on both sides of the Irish Sea, there is the same marked reluctance on the part of governments and the established media to confront the ethically questionable pedigree and provenance of CACI (UK), the company with contracts for the Irish and Scottish census.
Reports in mid March confirmed that CACI UK had been given a £18.5m contract for crucial work for Scotland's census.
The Irish contract for the 10 April Census however was announced in January 2011 and was largely ignored by the southern media but there has been a growing online campaign of opposition to CACI’s involvment in the Irish Census with activists like Mark O’Cúlar working hard to bring the story to the attention of the mainstream.
Abu Ghraib/Abbeyknockmoy?
It seems to be working because yesterday, RTÉ reported that “Sinn Féin has expressed serious concern over what it says are links between a company contracted by the Central Statistics Office to work on the 2011 Census and prisoner abuse [in Iraq].”
Pádraig MacLochlainn, who holds the Shinners’ Foreign Affairs and Trade brief, said that CACI was “named in a US military report as having provided interrogation staff at Abu Ghraib.”
Well, according to The Observer on 16 January 2005, three civilian contractors (one of whom was from CACI International) were implicated in the shocking human rights abuses that made the name Abu Ghraib shorthand for US brutality in the region. Steven Stefanowicz was from CACI International and John Israel and Adel Nakhla had been hired by Titan.
Stefanowicz was charged with giving orders that 'equated to physical abuse', Israel of lying under oath and Naklha of raping an Iraqi boy.
Systemic
It was also alleged that CACI interrogators used dogs to scare prisoners, placed detainees in unauthorised 'stress positions' and encouraged soldiers to abuse prisoners. Titan employees, it has been alleged, hit detainees and stood by while soldiers physically abused prisoners.
Investigators also discovered systemic problems of management and training - including the fact that a third of CACI International's staff at Abu Ghraib had never received formal military interrogation training.
According to their own blurb however, “CACI provides professional services and IT solutions needed to prevail in the areas of defense, intelligence, homeland security, and IT modernization and government transformation.”
Just a mix-up...
The Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) response to MacLochlainn’s allegations was hardly elucidating until you read between the lines. The CSO explained that it was all just a misunderstanding, that Sinn Féin had got it wrong. The company they were talking about was actually CACI International the American parent company of CACI (UK).
So there you have it, just a mix-up and besides, the UK company had already assured the CSO that there had been no proof or evidence at the time of the allegation referred to, nor had it been confirmed by CACI International or the US government in subsequent investigations.
And just to make sure that your minds are completely at rest; those helpful people at the CSO are also keen to downplay any suggestion that a hugely powerful multi-billion dollar US company would not (for the sake of honouring a minor contract) refuse to hand over the information of its subsidiaries if asked by the world’s greatest superpower (and its biggest customer). Again, the CSO has doubtless had assurances that the census forms are confidential and would be processed on a closed CSO network. A piffling little €5.8m contract always trumps the Patriot Act apparently....
Torture as a market punt
Those of you who are cynical enough to see CACI as a good stock-market punt would probably be right. If you’d been following the market newsfeed for the past week or so, you’d see that on 24 March, an investment news service reported that “CACI International received a multiple-award contract from the FBI for a ceiling value of $30bn. Under the contract, CACI International will compete for orders to provide IT services in cybersecurity, biometrics, systems engineering, software development, secure communications, counter-terrorism analytics, and systems operations and maintenance.”
And according to another market intelligence source referenced at the time of writing: “Shares of CACI International Inc (CACI) saw unusually high trading volume on Monday. Approximately 262,538 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 12.84% from the previous session. The stock last traded at $61.83.”
Fill your boots folks...
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