Google and the CIA?

snottgoblin writes "DailyTech has an article suggesting that Google might be involved in a partnership with the CIA. The article also quotes a former CIA officer that Google's refusal to comply with the DOJ over privacy issues was 'a little hypocritical [...] because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency.'" Because I'm sure no one would go on the air and try to drum up a scandal aimed at the biggest target they can find.

Not surprising...

I would not be surprised in such a relationship as there has been a collaborative arrangement at least going back to the Google Earth project. For instance, when Google Earth was demoed to the folks at the NRO and NIMA, there was a collective smacking of foreheads followed by a long silence as they all realized that this was an easy way to represent data using superimposable layers. Soon after, agreements were reached with Google for technology development in exchange for funding and a significant amount of space in the South Bay area.

The fact that Google is very good at their core market (search engines and relational databases) and is aggressively entering new markets in a variety of fields, should make them an attractive partner for many federal agencies that cannot seem to get their IT $#!^ together (I'm talking to you, Robert Mueller).

Re:

Frankly, I'd be disappointed if the CIA wasn't working with Google.

"Valuable Insight"

If something is worth posting, I don't see why anyone would immediately discredit the article with a comment like "Because I'm sure no one would go on the air and try to drum up a scandal aimed at the biggest target they can find. "

Let people RTFA and discuss it in the comments.

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in the traditional sense of the word: a site that regularly signals pages and articles elsewhere on the web by linking to them and adding personal commentary.

Key word: personal. The "traditional" blog is one person's record of their surfing activity, and

Good luck

From TFA: "I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off."

Good luck. Nobody ever really leaves The Company.

Re:Good luck

Good luck. Nobody ever really leaves The Company.

Agency.... It is "The Agency", and yes, you can leave the Agency. People do it all the time. The thing you have to remember is that the CIA is a huge organization with most folks being support personnel for the large numbers of analysts. There is a small group in R&D, and an even smaller group in direct operations.

Re:Good luck

....and yes, you can leave the Agency. People do it all the time.

Yeah, but you gotta live in a weird village, drive around in golf carts, and wear a big "#6"-type pin on your lapel.

Re:Good luck

The CIA is often referred to as "The Company". You're simply wrong.

OK Geoff, you have stumbled into the long raging debate in some circles as to why it is referred to as The Agency or The Company. Each group has its preferences and the usage is based upon where you place your allegiances.

You're simply wrong. And dumb.

Watch who you call dumb. The face [flickr.com] you put up on your Flicker stream does not look that smart to me.

Re:Good luck

You're a "Retinal neurophysiology scientist" and you think that intelligence comes from the face?

Geoff, chill dude. It was a humorous verbal parry against your insult of calling me dumb. Of course I don't think that, but you should not go around calling folks dumb either, eh?

Wow, America's education system really is doomed. Or maybe it's just the inbred retards in higher education in Utah.

Ah, now you *are* showing your ignorance and insulting all the good folks of Utah as well. As to your ignorance, have you ever considered that it might be that many of the folks in Utah are actually not from Utah? I am actually a Texan that moved to Utah. As to your insult of Utahns, I've actually found it pretty nice here. The people are not as friendly as they are in Texas, but they are smart, hard working and peaceable.

Re:

Well, Geoff's unnecessary cock-etry aside, if it's an ongoing debate why did you feel the need to weigh in and correct him, hmmm? Hmmm?

Because people in the know, *know*. And we don't need Hollywood or people shilling for book deals screwing up history fo

Re:

Sure, you can leave The Company. Oh, you meant alive . (cue Three Days of the Condor theme)

"Partnership" ?

Certainly I wouldn't be surpised if the CIA is buying technology from Google -- be it search technology, information presentation technology (Google Earth), etc. What's wrong with that? The article contained no indications that the Google was providing th

Re:

This is from the article -

From reports, Steele did not bring evidence to light in order to back up his claims,...

This article is just rumor and speculation. It is quite likely that Google is selling technology to the CIA, and that isn't a problem.

Judging by names

snottgoblin writes ...
ScuttleMonkey writes ... Because I'm sure no one would go on the air and try to drum up a scandal aimed at the biggest target they can find.

I'm one to talk, but do screen names like that instill confidence in readers that more than ju

Details?

TFA does not give any details as to what Google and the CIA are doing, if anything. It could be that Google is helping them filter information (not necessarily providing it) or build a new IT infastructure. We simply don't know what's going on.

The article

Not surprised at all

Google has posted openings requiring US govt. secret and SCI clearances for several years. This issue was raised back in 2001 or so...

empty article

the article has no real content; anyone have any more info on this? it seems like it's pure speculation with reference to an unverifiable source.. hang on.. yeah, that's CIA involvement all right.

I know what their plan is!

Google is working with the CIA to overthrow Yahoo and install a puppet regime in South MSN to counter potential communist forces in the north.

In-con-CEIVE-able!

Gee - no chance that one of the largest and smartest pattern-searching, data-mining, quicky-quicky-lightening-fast-search technology operations on the planet might be asked to provide some expertise or operational help to one of the agencies that needs exactly that kind of horsepower to help keep people from being killed?

Of course Google has contact with the CIA. And NRO, and NSA, and DIA, and the FBI, and probably most state-level agencies, as well. It would be shocking, really, if they did not.

And how does Google taking a stand on privacy in any way contradict the vested interest they have in the CIA more effectively sorting through unthinkable amounts of data and drawing better, more useful conclusions? Google is based in the US. When the economy takes a hard hit (as it did following 9/11), Google is hit hard, too. It's perfectly reasonable for them to be both "no evil(tm)" corporate citizens and also help a vital government agency better do what they're supposed to do. You know, the agency that so many people have complained about being unable to effectively sort through lots of information, communicate across agencies, and draw more workable conclusions? How can input from, and influence by Google-type people possibly be a bad thing, in the grand scheme of things?

The people at the CIA are just people. Google can afford very, very smart people that the agency can only get as consultants, or as hires that aren't worried about what they make. Farming out some high-end IT expertise to an entity that has an enormous profit incentive - in other venues - to be very good at it and competitively innovative is simply good policy.

Don't forget their records of voter affiliations

Darnit! I submitted this a few minutes ago, but with this addendum. See what you can make of it. I'm not sure.

___________

That's old news. But this image [waffleimages.com], discovered by a Something Awful forum user [somethingawful.com] in a time of election uncertainty, is new.

From the post: [somethingawful.com]

"I was browsing google maps today and came across something a little creepy. I moused over something on the map, and a preview page came up. (This is with a firefox extension that loads a URL you mouseover in a preview box.) It had people's legal names, familiar names, precinct, and political affilations. It seems to have had a lot more information than that, but I didn't scroll.

Thankfully I took a screenshot when it first happened, becuase I couldn't make it happen again. It's weird how codey the whole thing looks, isn't it? It obviously wasn't meant to be seen by people like me--it looks like it was meant to be parsed by a computer. What kind of database is Google hiding behind its maps? (I don't mean to sound tinfoil here, as this probably isn't some joint Google/NSA operation. I just wonder how they got this information and what they're using it for.)"

What is Google doing?

Re:Don't forget their records of voter affiliation

The people in that data set are candidates for public office, not just voters. As another poster pointed out, this is public information by law. As for how it wound up on Google Maps I don't know, but it's no secret that Google has been importing election [com.com]

An important thank you

I just want to say "thanks" to whoever added the "fud" tag.

THANKS DUDE!

I love it when people remember to put this tag on appropriate articles.

I have often been hard at work in the office some afternoon, or at home on a sunny Saturday morning, thinking to myself, "I'd really like to read some Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. And where better to do so than on Slashdot? If only there were a convient way to browse this FUD all on one easy screen. After all, there is not enough FUD on the Slashdot front page, you really have to look for it."

But thanks to the "fud" tag in the super-useful Slashdot InfoTagging SystemTM, I don't have to struggle any more to find this FUD!

What I like even better than the FUD tag is when someone tags an article notfud or "!fud". Because sometimes I want to read stuff that's just not FUD. (Thankfully, I've never seen an article with both the FUD and notfud tags at once.)

The only thing I like better than the notfud tag are the "yes" and "no" tags. Very useful, for when I need to come up with questions the answer to which is very clearly "yes" or "no."

WTF

I'm a big Google fanboy. I think their services are great, and I trust them with my personal email. But the summary for this item is really a load of horseshit. If this had been about Microsoft or any other company that draws the Slashdot hivemind's ire the story would have been immediately accepted as gospel.

But since it's Google the claims are dismissed immediately as a publicity stunt.

Fuck you, editors.

It was in beta.

> Google bought out the CIA?! "Google CIA" doesn't seem right.

Explains a few things though.

Consider the whole Iraq/WMD thing. Maybe CIA punched in a few keywords into intel.google.com/beta/search?q=WMD+iraq and ignored the fact that it was still in Beta.

Of course with this administration, we're talking about a bunch of people who wouldn't have noticed that the beta of intel.google.com was launched alongside amd.google.com...

In-Q-Tel

The CIA venture capital company is called In-Q-Tel [in-q-tel.com]. In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole [in-q-tel.com], who developed the forerunner to Google Earth. Keyhole ownership converted to Google ownership. I had heard from a reputable source that In-Q-Tel also invested in Google during their early days, though it appears that In-Q-Tel no longer holds any ownership in Google. In-Q-Tel invested in other search companies over the years [niallkennedy.com], though they seem to have divested ownership in most of those companies.

There needn't be anything nefarious about In-Q-Tel funding Google. Remember the explosive growth of the web a decade ago. Before google, you knew there was a ton of stuff out there, but there was no way to find it. Web searches were very hit or miss. Google improved search technology tremendously, and a decent search engine is itself a boon to the intelligence community. People in this discussion have joked about keyword searches for terrorists, but seriously, it's an invaluable tool, even if a Google Maps search for Osama bin Laden doesn't put a little pushpin on the appropriate cave. Hate groups and terrorist networks recruit using the internet. Search technologies make it easer to keep track of what's out there.

And heck, I get some benefit from decent search technology too.