The end of Nortel and privacy

[sommervr]

I have had this idea for a while now and I should put it out in the public sphere.

I was at Nortel as a software designer at during the meltdown in the early 2000's. At the time I felt that the bankruptcy was the result of corporate sabotage / financial shenanigans intentionally wrought to bring the company down. Whatever protections that Nortel should have merited as a strategic provider of services to NA militaries, governments and key financial institutions were ignored. Everyone looked the other way as market forces were brought to bear. There was no "too big to fail" considerations for Nortel.

Currently the same thing is happening to Blackberry. I think the two situations are intertwined. I believe the common causality is Data Security. Specifically in the current age of total data awareness and surveillance Nortel and Blackberry were eliminated because there would be no easy way to get them to play ball.

In my experience these companies were populated by the same type of engineers: good-guy Canadian boyscouts. For the products that I worked on I would personally never have gone along with the kind of engineering effort required to enable the infrastructure for total packet surveillance. At Nortel there would be no way to implement these changes surreptitiously as we had an open architecture and open collaborative development processes. Everybody would have known. I would have documented the whole process and whistle blown and probably half my group would have done the same. It would have been a nightmare to bring the Canadian companies in line. There was alot of bleed over from Nortel to Blackberry at the engineer level. I know the culture at Blackberry was the same as Nortel.

Just prior to 9/11 Nortel was a major player in NA at every level on the data backbone/switching/access layers. I personally wrote patches for the Canadian military, Paris Island and the Twin Towers for voice switches. My supposition is that the field of players had to be lessened to a reliable few to enable total packet surveillance and that Canadian companies were eliminated to further this goal.

[Citizen No2]

Well said sommervr.


That is why this non-sense with Apple and the unlocking of an iPhone is exactly that........ Non-sense for the Flock.


Regards.

[sommervr]

Well said sommervr.


That is why this non-sense with Apple and the unlocking of an iPhone is exactly that........ Non-sense for the Flock.


Regards.

Agreed. The only players still standing are the ones that played ball. Cisco was a small bit player in the 1990's. Nortel was going to buy them but instead bought Bay Networks because they had superior technology. Cisco certainly didn't get to where they are on technological merit.

Also something strange is going on with Nortel Pensions. Pensioners are still getting cheques. Despite alot of pressure/harrassment to swap out of the pension plan or lose everything the book value of my pension is more today than the day I left Nortel. Somebody is paying damages.

[Carmody]

For some of the situation on Cisco, see the documentary "Something Ventured"

The money trail for the Cisco takeover, starts at Shockely and Bell, moves to Fairchild, and then goes via the Ayn Rand (thus Koch, etc) path, through to Don Valentine, who left Fairchild and started a venture capital firm. They were the backers of Cisco who forced sandy and her husband out of Cisco.

Cisco became and remains the backbone of the vast majority of all western internet traffic.

hG7FskqDQ2U

Killing off Nortel and killing off Blackberry, was akin to the killing off of Avro and the Avro Arrow. Same people, same reasons. A threat to their power and 'machine'.

I tried to talk with some of these venture capitalists, once. At the highest level.

Within one day, I found myself talking to the technology acquisitions and evaluations personnel of the company, who's prior job was doing the same....for Lockheed Martin and the CIA/DARPA.

That's how bad it is. That is how interconnected it is.

Watch very carefully, about 9:30 minutes in, when Pitch uses the word 'fraternity'.

[happyuk]

I have had this idea for a while now and I should put it out in the public sphere.

I was at Nortel as a software designer at during the meltdown in the early 2000's. At the time I felt that the bankruptcy was the result of corporate sabotage / financial shenanigans intentionally wrought to bring the company down. Whatever protections that Nortel should have merited as a strategic provider of services to NA militaries, governments and key financial institutions were ignored. Everyone looked the other way as market forces were brought to bear. There was no "too big to fail" considerations for Nortel.

Currently the same thing is happening to Blackberry. I think the two situations are intertwined. I believe the common causality is Data Security. Specifically in the current age of total data awareness and surveillance Nortel and Blackberry were eliminated because there would be no easy way to get them to play ball.

In my experience these companies were populated by the same type of engineers: good-guy Canadian boyscouts. For the products that I worked on I would personally never have gone along with the kind of engineering effort required to enable the infrastructure for total packet surveillance. At Nortel there would be no way to implement these changes surreptitiously as we had an open architecture and open collaborative development processes. Everybody would have known. I would have documented the whole process and whistle blown and probably half my group would have done the same. It would have been a nightmare to bring the Canadian companies in line. There was alot of bleed over from Nortel to Blackberry at the engineer level. I know the culture at Blackberry was the same as Nortel.

Just prior to 9/11 Nortel was a major player in NA at every level on the data backbone/switching/access layers. I personally wrote patches for the Canadian military, Paris Island and the Twin Towers for voice switches. My supposition is that the field of players had to be lessened to a reliable few to enable total packet surveillance and that Canadian companies were eliminated to further this goal.

Your take on what happened to Nortel is an interesting one. I did an industry-based PhD with them roughly during the same period - late 90s until the mid 2000. I spent considerable period on placement at their UK Maidenhead branch, working with engineers and network designers. During the whole period I collaborated with them, there was nothing to indicate that they were in any kind of financial trouble. Sales staff appeared to be doing a tremendous amount of business. The salaries were very competitive, and there always seemed plenty of funding for staff events, conferences... and funding research like mine.

I still remember in 1999 their share price rocketing to an absurd level, part of the dotcom boom perhaps, and my engineering manager due to years/decades accruing shares becoming a millionaire, on paper at least, for a short while. Almost as quickly their share price tumbled and staff were cut right back to the bone. Many of the guys I knew there moved on to other things, including becoming contractors at (surprise surprise!) Cisco...

It does seem strange that such a huge company with massive amounts of patents, expertise and intellectual property should have tanked in this way. Nortel as a company they gave me my first proper taste of commercial experience, I'll always thank them for that.