Via our friends at Race to the Bottom, a blog that should be on your daily reading list. And for the background on how the banana kings got hooked up with enemies of the state, try our past coverage of the story here and here.

-- MDT

Labels: Chiquita, Freelance Security, RBDs, terrorism

According to this article, with admittedly scant detail, Barclay is currently under investigation for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism.

-- MDT

Labels: Barclays, investigation, terrorism

Really interesting piece from Portfolio magazine on Chiquita Banana's apparent association with Columbian death squads. Congress is looking in to the company's conduct and may charge some Chiquita executives as individuals when it comes down to who approved payments to these, essentially terrorist, RBDs (really bad dudes). Read on right here. See also this Chiquita company timeline. for a window into the company's somewhat shady history.

-- MDT

Labels: Chiquita, RBDs, terrorism

Seriously? Say it ain't so.

-- MDT

Labels: Chiquita, SEC, terrorism

Recall this story from last summer about the Federal government's abandoned plans for The Matrix, (or The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) a proposed database that would aggregate public records and commercially obtained data (read, credit headers, cell phone numbers and whatever else commerical firms can get their hands on) and make the information available to local law enforcement.

While the Feds discontinued their plans for the database, much to the relief of privacy advocates, Florida, for its part is apparently continuing to develop a similar system that would be powered by Lexis Nexis's Seisint. It is worth noting that Seisint was affilicated by a major personal info heist that touched off last summer's tidal wave of data breach news coverage and increased governmental, media and consumer attention to the issues surrounding personal data security.

-- MDT

Labels: data breech, database, homeland security, Lexis Nexis, Matrix, Seisint, terrorism