5 companies now control 80% of America's contracted spying

Tim Shorrock at The Nation did the legwork to to come up with the numbers.

The problem with just five companies providing the lions share of contractors is that the client, the U.S. government, wont have much alternative when a company screws up, says David Isenberg, the author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq. [...] There comes a point when the marketplace is so concentrated that the service provider simply becomes too big to fail, no matter how lousy their performance, says Isenberg, who closely monitors the privatization of national-security work. If that makes you think of the financial-services industry, well, thats exactly what Im talking about.

5 Corporations Now Dominate Our Privatized Intelligence Industry (The Nation)

Image: Thomas Tolkein