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CIA Is Investing Heavily In Firms That Do Social Media Mining and Surveillance (theintercept.com)
Lee Fang, reporting for The Intercept, lists more than three-dozen companies that have received funding from CIA. In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm, the publication claims, has invested in 38 companies that research on "social media mining and surveillance." The unpublicized In-Q-Tel companies are: Aquifi, Beartooth, CliQr, CloudPassage, Databricks, Dataminr, Docker, Echodyne, Epiq Solutions, Geofeedia, goTenna, Headspin, Interset, Keyssa, Kymeta, Lookout, Mapbox, Mesosphere, Nervana, Orbital Insight, Orion Labs, Parallel Wireless, PATHAR, Pneubotics, PsiKick, Rocket Lab, Skincential Sciences, Soft Robotics, Sonatype, Spaceflight Industries, Threatstream, Timbr.io, Transient Electronics, TransVoyant, TRX Systems, Voltaiq, and Zoomdata. From the report: Bruce Lund, a senior member of In-Q-Tel's technical staff, noted in a 2012 paper that "monitoring social media" is increasingly essential for government agencies (PDF) seeking to keep track of "erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters, not to mention general global trends."CIA also recently funded Clearista, a skin care product company that collects DNA.
= Investing in???
The lines between corporations and government are getting blurrier by the day. Those with an ear, let them hear...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
You mean investing
Just seems a weird choice to put in the article.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Poor Manish! It isn't his fault.
Is it not "three dozen"? What is with the "-" in there?
Title says "investigating" the summary says "investing in".
Looks like Slashdot is following the MSM's trend of half-assed literary composition. Pity.
Investing != Investigating Pretty sure the title is incorrect.
That said, screw the CIA. They work against US citizens far more than they work for them.
Shouldn't the headline read "investing" instead of "investigating"?
Investigating? or Investing?
We get all bent out of shape when the NSA collects nearly useless phone records, and then give every secret in our lives to Facebook, Google, and Yahoo without a care!
Dog is my co-pilot.
BearTooth and GoTenna are communications companies looking for off-grid comms. I can see why "the company" would be interested in this off the shelf solution. They both pair your Android or iOS devices via Bluetooth to their off-grid communications product.
Beartooth forms a mesh network with other Beartooth units it can "see", operates in the 900mhz band, and offers text private and group messaging, gps sharing, and voice messaging across the mesh network it creates between it's users. It also charges your device via it's onboard battery pack.
GoTenna is more expensive but does less. It offers point to point (meaning the person you want has to be in range of you, there is no mesh network) text communication and gps location sharing. It operates on the MURS bands. The only bonus is that it supposedly offers better battery life than BearTooth, and you can get it at consumer retailers like REI rather than ordering online.
and make them part of the Collective. If they have new ways of spying on everyone, we must assimilate them.
We are the government. Resistance is futile. From now on, you will service...us.
That's an autocorrect f-up, no doubt.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Come on, Faildot. Did Dice buy you back?
like democracy
No surprise here.
The only questions concern how much, how many people, and length of............ retention.
Because they've looked into their crystal ball, and have seen that the terrorists of the future are going to blog about their next big target ("200,000 likes and we'll bomb the Statue of Liberty!").
You know what, I'm fine with this. I just need some island to retire to, and the rest of the world can go full retard.
..., operates in the 900mhz band,...
That would be 0.9 hz, right? ;-)
The CIA having a business arm is a very dangerous thing.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Since both the intelligence agencies and the DoD have huge black budgets who know what other companies they are investing in. How is it that companies with no profits keep getting funded?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is what happens when you Facetwat addicts post every stupid cat video, check in into every restaurant you go to, and post every little thing that happens to you -- people start using you to make even *more* money than before.
Enjoy your oversharing. It'll bite you in the ass someday. Maybe now, maybe soon, maybe a long time for now.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I don't care where they fly as long as the legroom is good.
People tend to forget that the CIA is divided into two division (technically its four, but by function its is really two), Operations and Analysis. Operations is the division that does all the black bag stuff, while the Analysis division geared to intelligence gathering and, well, analysis. Investing in social media intelligence (oxymoron?) gathering companies falls within the purview of a government agency whose purpose is to analyze "erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters, not to mention general global trends.." as mentioned in the TFS and report such analysis to their clients in the administration and Congress. Not everything about intelligence agencies is nefarious.
So is the summary. Only 4 of the 38 are social media analysis firms. Docker, for example, is a software container (sort of virtual machine) company.
Best Slashdot Co
well, a little anyways.
Secret U.S. government agencies do whatever they want. There is very little oversight. Those who want to kill people have no need to take a chance on getting arrested for murder. They join one of the many secret or semi-secret agencies.
Those who want to play video games that kill real people could work for the U.S. government in 19 countries. Now only 18 countries since the Uzbek government evicted the CIA killing organization.
Those in the U.S. who want to mistreat other people don't need to risk going to prison.
Those who want easy money that can be wasted in crazy schemes have no need to face bankruptcy. They can join a secret agency and use taxpayer money for things like a $43 million compressed natural gas station that serves only about 100 taxi drivers.
Those who want to find investment opportunities can join the many secret U.S. government agencies like No Sense in America, NSA, and listen to phone calls. Think the NSA is one organization? No, the NSA has contracting companies: How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA.
There is little democracy in the U.S. The U.S. government helps the rich get richer.
The funny thing is that you can do exactly the same (it's the first talk in that video) to datamine the CIA, FBI, ... and their subcontractors. The resulting project names you find range from scary-but-expected ("Panopticon") to downright disturbing ("Never shake a baby").
Donate free food here
Taxpayer dollars thrown at the investigation and subduement of movements and protest.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
Benito Mussolini
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Just to be clear -- the CIA is investing in sonatype -- the people who write the software that runs maven.org and builds or hosts the authority for virtually all java software project's in the entire world?
Did I read this correctly?
The unpublicized In-Q-Tel companies are: Aquafina , Beartooth, CliQr, CloudPassage, Databricks, Dataminr, Docker, Echodyne, Epiq Solutions, Geofeedia, goTenna, Headspin, Interset, Keyssa, Kymeta, Lookout, Mapbox, Mesosphere, Nervana, Orbital Insight, Orion Labs, Parallel Wireless, PATHAR, Pneubotics, PsiKick, Rocket Lab, Skincential Sciences, Soft Robotics, Sonatype, Spaceflight Industries, Threatstream, Timbr.io, Transient Electronics, TransVoyant, TRX Systems, Voltaiq, and Zoomdata.
HTH