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Article: Google, CIA invest in ‘future’ of Web monitoring

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, July 29, 2010
13 years ago3,958 views

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

John [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Stupid title. We already knew about Google's investment and now that In-Q-Tel has put some money in 2009, Danger Room can afford this sensationalism. Where's the "exclusivity"?

<<Just because Google and In-Q-Tel have both invested in Recorded Future doesn’t mean Google is suddenly in bed with the government. Of course, to Google’s critics — including conservative legal groups, and Republican congressmen — the Obama Administration and the Mountain View, California, company slipped between the sheets a long time ago.>> OK...

Theresa [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Danger Room covers quite thoroughly most cybersecurity issues, but the way they managed the Bradley Manning story is quite disturbing...

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Thanka John for the copy-paste summary

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

[moved from "Google + CIA Form New Company"]

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- Tadeusz Szewczyk -

Saturday, July 31, 2010

It's not Googlezon, it's scarier. Google & the CIA invest in the same company at the same time: The startup does "web monitoring".

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

I mean it alignswell with Eric Schmidt's assertion that we don't need privacy anymore on the Web.

The Google-CIA venture is about predicting the future. Sounds like "Precrime" to me.

-----------------------------
- Ionut Alex. Chitu -

Google must be stopped:
http://google-watch.org/gpower.html

-----------------------------
- DPic -

The only silver lining to the this cloud is that it isn't too late to prevent the oncoming storm.

Use free software.
Protect your privacy.
Avoid software as a service.
Use distributed services respecting data portability
Be aware
etc
etc
etc.

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- Hervé -

1. This has already been covered in this forum two days ago: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/172915.html (and we know Google invested in Recorded Future back since May 4th http://mashable.com/2010/05/04/google-predicts-future).

2. The title of this post and the article are really misleading IMHO: no* company has been 'formed' by Google and the CIA. The two investments are completely separated – the dates and the motivations. Google invested for their search business (everyone would love to search for upcoming events) and the CIA invested via their well-known fund In-Q-Tel (which backed Keyhole before it became Google Earth, and invested in Gemplus which is now Gemalto and has 49% of the world chip cards market. I love conspiracies but I think there's nothing scary here, unfortunately. If the CIA invested alone in Recorded Future, we should have been concerned that "prediction" tech could be mastered only by the gov't and not B2C companies. I think the fact that Google invested in RF is great news for Internet users as it will probably give us the best tech in the hands of every human, as they did with Google Earth.

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- TOMHTML -

Hervé is completely right.
Every year we have at least one "Google is in bed with CIA" rumour. Trollers like that.

- Jérôme (aka Hervé) -

Ditto TOMHTML :D

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

"formed" may not be the right word but don't you think that the CIA will tell you just a tiny little bit of the story? They don't publish press releases for everything they do ;-)

Btw. who are you? Did you just call me "troll"? This is not a rumour btw. this is an article based on openly available facts. Neither Google nor the CIA hide the fact that they fund the same company. So where is the rumour here? Please try at least to be factual.

Do you work for Google? I've noticed recently that Google employees call privacy advocates "conspiracy theorists" and the likes. This is a very sad development IMHO.

I consider pulling out of Google services completely like many people already did before the Google CIA farce.

Jérôme [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

I don't work for Google. Actually, I'm sure that none of the participants in this thread works for Google :)

I just want to highlight few words from the (misleading) Wired article:
<<No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.>>

Google and In-Q-Tel disclosed their investments in Recorded Future Google back in May http://www.google.com/ventures/portfolio.html#recorded-future
and IQT did it probably on July 7th http://www.iqt.org/technology-portfolio/Recorded%20Future.html
http://imgur.com/Uvix2.png (here's a cache of their website in July 25th, 2 days before the Wired article http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_6Dzr083misJ:www.iqt.org/technology-portfolio/Recorded%2520Future.html+site:iqt.org+%22recorded+future).

Tadeusz, did you consider stopping using Google services when you learnt that IQT and Google were behind Keyhole Inc? Should Google avoid Recorded Future because the government is interested in its product?

Wired is very misleading with this article – note that they don't think Google is 'directly collaborating' with the CIA... – and I can't find anything 'exclusive' in it. Can you?

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

And I bet you will soon disconver that there are other big companies funding some of the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel#Selected_investments

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Basically I collect alternative services for Google entities all the time. Each time Google compromises privacy a bit more I get closer to making the switch. I don't care whether the Wired article is 100% correct. Even 80% is scary enough.
Also other reports like the one where the Google China hack happened through a backdoor built for the US government are eye opening enough.

While other services wil have to comply with US paranoia as well at least having your data spread over several services not connected with each other makes it a bit harder to access and take control of by government spies.

Jérôme [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

But do you use Google Maps/Earth?

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