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.

Comments

Re:"Valuable Insight"

[dangitman]

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 did not have an open discussion forum. This is also the defining element of the contemporary use of "blog" - it is a personal site written mostly by one person, not a vast open forum.

Slashdot is also not a "record of surfing activity" - as stories are chosen from thousands that slashdotters surf to. One story might be by "submitter A" who has never surfed to the site linked in the next story by "submitter B." If it were a list of surfing atcivity, it would have a list of all the other sites the submitter surfed to in that day.

In-Q-Tel

[reg106]

The CIA venture capital company is called In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole, 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, 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.

Re:Don't forget their records of voter affiliation

[ShaunC]

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 data into Google Earth for awhile, so perhaps they're trying to do the same with Google Maps.