Since Edward Snowden did his stuff a lot of companies have revealed having worked with or cooperated with the NSA at some level. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and several others are on that list. In their defense, several of these companies have started to push back and make government request for information public. But what about the companies who haven’t taken that action or have chosen to say less?

As a disclaimer, I have no insider information so I’m not accusing or revealing anything. Just asking the question.

The name that occurred to me today was IBM. If I were an NSA analyst tasked with gathering useful information about people one of my first targets would be IBM. The reason why is easy enough to see if we list a few of IBM’s major products:

IMS/DB2 – Database with a significant userbase in the financial industry
WAS – A web application server with significant user base in the financial industry
z/OS and Mainframes – Large servers with a significant userbase in the financial industry
RAD – Development platform primarily for applications running on WAS
Guardium – Database transaction monitoring software with significant userbase in the financial industry

A pattern does seem to be emerging. And yet the only real bit of news I’ve been able to find on IBM cooperating with the NSA is a lawsuit in which IBM tried to deny much of a connection.

If anyone has more information on IBM and the NSA or PRISM, feel free to share.