BEER -- chapters 10 and 23 (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 1.1

[Joseph Tracy]

 I traced this same thread and agree with what you are finding, that P got it from Ruppert, or wherever Ruppert got it as to how it is used by intel agencies.
On Dec 10, 2013, at 3:52 PM, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:

> "'I see my share of conspiracy theories, some are patently bullshit, some I want to believe so much I have to be careful, others are inescapable even if I wanted to escape.'"
> 
> March Kelleher, BE 117
> 
> --Sound like a conspiracy theorist's dream? Absolutely. But the fact is, it's true.--
> 
> Richard L. Fricker, "The INSLAW Octopus"
> 
> 
> In this and the following postings I will dig a little deeper into the PROMIS matter (but not to worry: Eichmann, spy satellites, the NSA and octopuses will also turn up). I have tried to be as focused as possible but PROMIS is a difficult beast to handle. In the first round of postings, I will examine the passages in BE where PROMIS is explicitly mentioned and provide some historical context and background.
> 
> 
> We find the first veiled reference to PROMIS in BE on page 99. Ernie claims that his son-in-law Avi's line of work includes developing "Software to kill Arabs." (BE 99)
> 
> It will become clear later what this is about.
> 
> 
> PROMIS is explicitly mentioned for the first time when Nicholas Windust meets Maxine:
> 
> "Maxine: 'So. This was about my brother-in-law. He'll be back in a couple of weeks, you can can talk to him yourself.'
> Windust: 'You want to know what's been getting the security community all nervous lately, Ms. Tarnow? It’s a piece of software called Promis, originally designed for federal prosecutors, to share data among the district courts.'" (BE 104)
> 
> The software's name is mostly given as "PROMIS" but one can also find "Promis."
> 
> 
> *What is PROMIS?*
> 
> PROMIS is short for Prosecutor's Management Information System, a software developed in the mid-70s by the Washington D.C.
> based information technology company Inslaw.
> 
> --Designed as a case-management system for prosecutors,
> PROMIS has the ability to track people. "Every use of
> PROMIS in the court system is tracking people," said
> Inslaw President Hamilton. "You can rotate the file by
> case, defendant, arresting officer, judge, defense lawyer,
> and it's tracking all the names of all the people in all
> the cases."
> 
> What this means is that PROMIS can provide a complete
> rundown of all federal cases in which a lawyer has been
> involved, or all the cases in which a lawyer has
> represented defendant A, or all the cases in which a
> lawyer has represented white-collar criminals, at which
> stage in each of the cases the lawyer agreed to a plea
> bargain, and so on. Based on this information, PROMIS can
> help a prosecutor determine when a plea will be taken in a
> particular type of case.--
> 
> Richard L. Fricker, "The INSLAW Octopus"
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html
> (March/April 1993)
> 
> Windust continues,
> 
> "It works regardless of what language your files are written in, even what operating system you’re using." (BE 104)
> 
> Compare:
> 
> --Created in the 1970s by former National Security Agency (NSA) programmer and engineer Bill Hamilton, now President of Washington,
> D.C.'s Inslaw Corporation, PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System) crossed a threshold in the evolution of computer
> programming. Working from either huge mainframe computer systems or smaller networks powered by the progenitors of today's PCs,
> PROMIS, from its first "test drive" a quarter century ago, was able to do one thing that no other program had ever been able to do.
> It was able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or data bases simultaneously, regardless
> of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating system or platforms on which that data base was then
> currently installed.--
> 
> Michael C. Ruppert, "Promis"
> http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html
> (September 2000)
> 
> The wording suggests that Ruppert is probably one of Pynchon’s sources. I will later demonstrate that this is indeed the case.
> 
> The information from the two articles by Ruppert that I will reference is also available in Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon," perhaps even
> verbatim. As I do not have that book I will quote from Ruppert's articles.
> 
> Thomas
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l