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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.
.... will still have access to the site for a fee. The agreement isn't with the CIA for exclusive use.
One of the neater features of Northern Lights was the folders. I liked how they organized the info and let it flow out of your continuous clicking.
What is funny is that Northern Light is actually a better search engine than Google for specific info. Northern Light drills down on the subject only and doesn't take into consideration links to the info as Google does.
http://boston.internet.com/news/article/0,1928,200 1_950451,00.html
Public free search engine didn't pan out for them.
As much as the focus tends to land on it, information gathering is not by any means the weakest link in the intelligence system. Probably we hear most about it because
a) it is glamourous (think James Bond), and
b) it often affects our civil liberties.
But the real problem with intelligence is the processing of retrieved raw information. They gather so much of the stuff it's extremely difficult to sort through it to figure out what's relevant and what's not.
That is why whenever something bad happens (like Sept 11) the intelligence community looks sloppy. In retrospect they can dig out wads of unprocessed information that would have given advance warning of the disaster. Then they take a lot of heat for missing it, even though they may not really be at fault. Sometimes it's a matter of finding a needle in a haystack.
It's a little more interesting to geeks because it's an issue of pure computer science. Processing raw data into meaningful information is computing at its best.
But developing better algorithms as a response to a national disaster is never going to be a solution that catches the public's imagination.
"Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this is that Northern Light's public search engine is fated for destruction later this month."
According to fuckedcompany.com, they will be converting their search-engine service to a paid-only model.
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.
In-Q-Tel is a venture capital fund set up by the CIA to invest in technologies that may serve the intelligence community. This is not a CIA contract for search technology. The CIA was Verity Inc.'s first big customer and as far as I know, they're still mostly using Verity internally (I managed Verity Internet products for years).
And the article misspelled Gilman Louie's name...
Nick
This is just not true. Over the last year, more and more search engine companies are effectively consolidating - by licencing "search engine technology" from another company. The real down side of this is that the more popular (popular by the licencing...not by users) are a "pay" engine, whereby companies can move their listings higher in the rankings by paying a fee.
This has two main side effects.
One, there are a lot of search engines out there that are really the same search engine. Same query, same results.
Two, when you search with them, you're not really getting what you asked for, but what someone payed for.
I understand why companies are doing this - there isn't a really strong revenue model for search engines right now; banners don't cut it.
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.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
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.
Reporter: You mean, the procurement officer paid $6,000,000 for grep?
Guy with face hidden: Yes.
Reporter: What happened to him when they found out?
Guy with face hidden: Well, they were going to hit him with a hammer, but they decided that would be hypocritical...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?