Slashdot Mirror
Northern Light Technology Makes Deal WIth C.I.A.
Llywelyn writes: "The C.I.A. has evidently written up a contract with the group Northern Light Technology to develop a search engine that can sort through the C.I.A's increasing mound of unprocessed data. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this is that Northern Light's public search engine is fated for destruction later this month. " It's inevitable, IMHO, that some of this happen - the search engine world is overpopulated right now, and with the economic downturn, more and more companies will move to where they can survive.
You make it sound like working for the CIA is some odious move of last resort. Perhaps the management and staff of Northern Light is excited about working with the intelligence agency. Perhaps they see it as a way to help their country. Perhaps the processing of terabytes of data is a thrilling prospect from a purely intellectual point of view.
The standard /. dislike of all things governmental is not necessarily mirrored through all geeks.
please go read the article before spewing ignorant comments - this isn't about searching the net, it is about internally searching the intel the CIA has already collected.
"Ahmed, have you posted all our secret plots to the website yet?"
"Yes Jimal, just as you have instructed. And I have modified the robots.txt to keep the great satan's search engine crawler from discovering our plans!"
"Allah be praised!"
Sheesh, oh and it isn't the FBI either.
I suspect that soon, good search engines will just be a (hopefully) inexpensive pay site, where you pay $30 a year and can use that search engine.
But can you imagine all the bad possiblities if they were able to actually tie all your searches together and see WHAT YOU searched for? Sure they can do it by i.p. or cookie, but an actual account, probably verified by credit card?
On the otherhand, a search engine is a basic need to use the internet. And I'd be quite surprised if some of them didn't start heading this way, REALLY CHEAP though. Incidently I don't know exactly when google.com became my ONLY search engine, replacing altavista.com, but it happened. Probably because of the excellent results (not perfect though) and the light interface.
On another note, I get the BEST referrals from google.com to my site. I get the MOST referrals from msn.com to my site. I say BEST from google.com, because the people that find my site through them, most likely want to see my site, and end up staying. MSN's referrals are usually pretty broad topics.
Northern Light downgraded its relevance about two years ago when they weren't generating enough capital and decided to charge its visitors for "premium" articles. At that point, NL effectively ceased to be a search engine and became an information broker. Nothing's really changed.
"Folks just call him Buckethead." -- Les Claypool
When we hear of the Library of Congress overthrowing a thirdworld despot
The CIA doesn't overthrow third-world despots, they put them into power so that politically connected companies keep getting richer (under the guise of "stopping the commies"). Hmm, I guess that needs updating now... I know! Replace commies with terrorists.
Actually, the CIA has helped overthrow third world despots or has helped prevent or thwart the efforts of colonial powers to attack thirdworld countries. It has nothing to do with "politically connected companies": this is a myth long ago dispelled and is only believed by a politically uninformed 1 to 5% or so of the population.