This Lockheed Martin contract tarnishes the census(UK)

[CHIMO]

Lockheed Martin UK, a subsidiary of the world's largest arms manufacturer, will be helping to run this month's census. Its role, contractually valued at £150m, will be "delivering data capture and processing support services" for the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Lockheed Martin has helped run a number of censuses in the past, including the UK's in 2001 and Canada's in 2006. But it is not to be mistaken for just another civil contractor.

Lockheed Martin is best known for its production of cluster munitions, F-16 jets and Trident Missiles. It is one of three contractors that run the nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston, and has been a beneficiary of both the US's bloated military industrial complex, and the "war on terror" for the past 10 years.

It has sold arms to the repressive Saudi and Bahraini regimes,, but perhaps most controversial was its provision of private contract interrogators to Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib – the site of the infamous prisoner abuse scandal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/18/lockheed-martin-census-arms-companies