Slashdot Mirror

"Amazon and NVIDIA, the venture arms of the CIA"

Unsurpringly, Amazon is *the* cloud service supplier for the the CIA...

On the other hand, In-Q-Tel (the *actual* venture arm of the CIA) has partnered with companies like...

* Booz Allen (the actual employer of Edward Snowden during his short stint as an NSA contractor)
* Intelliseek (eventually purchased by Nielsen Online, the folks help decide what programs get air time)
* Keyhole (eventually purchased by Google to become google earth was also partially funded by NVIDIA)
* Safeweb (eventually purchased by Symantec, the same sellers of the popular Norton Anti-virus software)

As always, the truth is out there, and some of it is a little bit unnerving...

Yeah, conspiracy and that. I'm enough of a scientist to know that this was an unverifiable (and unfalsifiable) hypothesis, at least for means whithin my reach

Well, it should be verifiable if you assume that In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA and NSA, actually posts all of their investments in their portfolio. But considering how much they do in secret, it's entirely possible that they simply left Google out. Or, it's listed there, but it's one of Google's many obscure subsidiaries or purchases.

In-Q-Tel

The IQT Mission

We identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and broader U.S. Intelligence Community.

The CIA (among other agencies) often fund or form venture capital firms specializing in the technology they would like to have. One such company is called In-Q-Tel. This company has worked to create all types of cloud based recognition solutions. This includes services recently in the news for the interception and analysis of any digital transmissions like voice and email.

They fund these firms to do the work they could never get done in the land of eternal red tape. It's probably better that the government reaches out to companies to develop things than companies working to create things for the government. We should all remember the distaster that was Toys.

Then again, what is private group, would In-Q-Tel qualify ?

http://www.iqt.org/

I am assuming that you heard about the Total Information Awareness initiative that was defunded in 2003 by congress. Luckily for those wanting to be totally information aware Silicon Valley's own CIA venture capitalists IN-Q-TEL forked out some cash in 2004 to help get Facebook up and running. Thankfully no one is now starving for information in the ASA(Alphabet Soup Agencies) as hundreds of millions are prepared to give away their darkest secrets to anyone who offers to help water their plants.

Please explain to me how this locks in the customer base?

In-Q-Tel invests in most tech start ups. It's not a secret, nor is it mysterious or evil.
However, they invested in Keyhole inc; which Google bought. That is how In-Q-Tel got 'associated' with Google.

They sold their 5000 shares of Google stocks in '05. wow 5000 shares! what a powerhouse~

http://www.iqt.org/about-iqt/history.html

You might consider InQtel http://www.iqt.org/ and Visible Technologies http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/exclusive-us-spies-buy-stake-in-twitter-blog-monitoring-firm/, both which fit this article's description, and have had tons of CIA seed money put into them. We know the pentagon has a sock-puppet program, and whatever law prevent them from operating in the US can be bypassed through private contractors hence (perhaps) Fusion Centers. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fusion_center Both the FBI and DHS are quite busy here too. I frequently observe FBI, .mil, dhs.gov, DoD, and other government IPs visiting my website and subscribing to comments. Do a whois on my latest visitor: 153.31.113.26 ~~ And yeah, go right ahead and mod this as "troll" too. Bloody snobs!

I don't know if you're being serious or sarcastic, but I'd just like to bring to everyone's attention that Google was created by In-Q-Tel which is a CIA front company for funding upstarts and "civilian' projects. In-Q-Tel ends up later withdrawing funding once the upstart can stand up on their own two feet (Google can now certainly do that).

From In-Q-Tel's website:
In-Q-Tel identifies, adapts, and delivers innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community. - In-Q-Tel Website

Fact:
In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google Inc., worth over $2.2 million, on Nov 15, 2005.[6] The stocks were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, the CIA funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth - Wikipedia: Wikipedia

I don't care how people want to spin it, but Google is nothing more than a U.S. Gov't CIA start-up with a civilian face. And to say that Google no longer remembers who In-Q-Tel is (or vice-versa) because they sold their shares would be a joke, and an assault on most peoples' intelligence. This is like saying the corporations who buy and pay for politicians, have no say in what the politician does once they get into office. We all know it doesn't work this way.

The bad side with Skype is that it seems to be rather bloated these days occupying a rather large amount of memory in our computers. It's the #3 application in memory consumption on my machine. Considering the services it's offering that is a bit high.

More bad sides: Details on the consortium buying Skype:IQT (with precedents) Skype already comes with back door into your system now..
The question is, what will skype in all its bloated glory be capable of after it is taken off eBays hands? At least eBay had the goal of making money off their investment.
Open sourcing the Skype linux client also benefits IQT, since Linux skype users are such a small fraction of the market getting them on side only helps increase the network effect for the closed source skype spy client.

Skype spy client is an extremely poor alternative to an open communication standard with a lively community of compatible talk clients. Unfortunately such a community has not yet materialized. And before you point to SIP clients, please do a little bit of research from "Joe Six pack's" point of view which is: Download and install Skype spy client in three mouse clicks and talk. SIP clients AFAIK are overly complicated to use - and it seems the protocol is built to make sure they stay that way. Sad, just sad.

.

The CIA doesn't need to pull strings to get at Facebook's data, according to this article they were involved in the funding of it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA.

In-q-tel's site is http://www.iqt.org./
I think the CIA is even bigger and better funded than you thought!