Will this little story about Google and CIA gain legs?

Open tin foil. Tear off sheet. Make hat.
Whee – I’m safe.

Jake, hopefully that was a joke. If you think this is just “conspiracy theory” you had better wake up and smell the coffee.

I’ve been emailing with google video support for a few days now, and the PR speak replies you get are hilarious.
It would be nice if someone actually talked and explained what’s going on like a real person.
I’d like to see them deny the links with the CIA though. That’s going to be awesome. It’ll be like China claiming they don’t censor information.

Robert and Karel, I would like to know more about the relationship between convicted felon former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Microsoft. It is public information that Abramoff worked for Preston, Gates and Ellis (Bill’s father’s firm) and that Abramoff had Microsoft as one of his most lucrative clients. However, not much has been published about what Abramoff did to benefit Microsoft. Influence peddling? Direct payoffs to politicians? Efforts to undermine wage and hour protections when Microsoft does business over seas? These are all known and admitted Abramoff modus operandi.

As people who claim to be interested in disclosure by large corporations and who claim to have insider access to information about Microsoft, you two will surely offer insight regarding Abramoff’s role in Microsoft’s affairs. Assuming, of course, that you are not only interested in disclosure by large corporations that happen to be competitors with Microsoft.

When did Alex Jones become the voice of credibility?

All the Ex-CIA agent said was Google was in bed with the Government. Lets have some real facts, if its true.

Charlie

well seeing that the CIA has the power to topple foreign governments (past history shows this ) I don’t see why some people are shocked that the CIA would want to have Google’s data since it does this with the major telecom companies.

Podesta, whats your point?

Podesta: >>As people who claim to be interested in disclosure by large corporations and who claim to have insider access to information about Microsoft

I have insider access to SOME information, but hardly all. You must have missed that Microsoft is 60,000 people. If you think I know everything that all of those 60,000 people are doing then I must ask you whether you want to buy a bridge in San Francisco? It’s painted red and goes for a reasonable price. How much is in your bank account again?

But, that aside, what the hell does a relationship have to do with ME a consumer of technology like having a cozy deal between a search company and the government?

@3.. What that heck is that all about? Talk about tin foil hat stuff.

Scoble, transparency up to a point is a good thing. However, I’d prefer the less our enemies and criminals know about how we find out about what they are doing the better. But, if you want to live your life in paranoia, that’s fine. Sounds like if it were up to you, you’d want the courts to tell suspects they are going be wiretapped or their their searches analyzed next week so they can be prepared/

LayZ: well, our founding fathers wanted to prevent fishing expeditions that are now easy to perform because the important data isn’t stored in someone’s home, or on their individual phone conversations, but on massive servers that are tracking everything we do online. I guess you don’t mind these fishing expeditions, but I do find them worrisome, yeah. Especially in the day and age of boards of directors like exist at HP.

All your privacy belong to us. Sigh.

Robert, i have a question for you. (I am trying to play the devil’s advocate here.)

anyone thats been folloing your blog for a reasonable amount of time pretty much knows about what you have been doing. How much more information thats not already in this blog would be ‘captured’ by a comnpany like Google?

(I am not directing this towards you at a personal level. This question would apply for any blogger )

Blogger: when I talk about privacy I really don’t care about MY privacy. Well, unless you all want to mount a webcam on my bedroom wall. That’s about the only area of my life I don’t share.

But I do worry about the societal implications of all this stuff.

There’s a bigger issue involved than MY stuff.

Ask yourself “why did society make rules that limit police powers” for instance? After all, if you don’t do anything wrong you won’t need to worry about the police, right?

Wrong.

If you let corporations and govermental powers run amok you’ll see other effects that go far beyond just catching lawbreakers.

Need we go back and study what happened in Germany in the 1940s for an example?

What if the religious right takes control of our government and then can find and imprison anyone who searched for “legal abortions” for instance? Or, worse, “porn?”

Yes, I can see a world where this happens. Just ask my wife. She grew up in Iran where that kind of stuff goes on even today.

Or, ask anyone alive before 1960 to see how we treated black people in this country.

Or, ask someone who is homosexual how society treats them, even today.

Yes, I +am+ concerned about the power that comes with being able to identify large groups of behaviors just by looking at search traffic.

Ten years ago I worked on Cairo at Microsoft. The fellas at the CIA were very intrigued by our little search engine technology. If someone in buildings 1-6 had a properly shined pair of shoes and good teeth, chances are they didn’t really work there, even if they had a blue badge. Dig?

Other government agencies came in and rummaged through the NT source code as part of C2 certification and who knows what else. (Some of those guys got to wear t-shirts and Birkenstocks, though.)

If you want to sell to government agencies, you play these games.

The real question is how far does it go. Obviously Microsoft didn’t do enough back then to prevent the antitrust stuff, so conserve tinfoil accordingly.

On the other hand Google has great interest in expanding into heavily-regulated markets like financial and brokerage services so there’s obviously plenty of reasons for them to play nice, maybe even a little too nice.

Robert, I’m not Google PR, but you can read my take on this here:
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9612

Look for the comment beginning with ‘Okay, let’s practice the old skill that I like to call “consider the source.”‘

Suffice it to say that I’ve had the opportunity to check out two previous claims by this prisonplanet source and found both of the previous claims to be baseless. See my comments on that thread if you want to learn more.

Matt: thanks! You’re better than Google PR in my book.

Podesta,

I haven’t checked any links with Abramoff, but there are a lot of strange things going on with MS and the secret government. MS does seem to be helping the FBI and CIA with taking advantage of exploits in their own software. People from MS, or linked to MS, have attended the Bilderberger meetings as well, one of them was MS’s CTO Craig Mundie this year, and Melinda Gates. This is fact. Think of it what you will, you can’t deny it. Check this out: http://www.savethemales.ca/001614.html
I also recently wrote on my own website about Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation buying up what’s left of independent newspapers. I thought they were supposed to be doing charity work? Is this part of global plan for media domination? Another example is Murdoch buying MySpace, and soon maybe even Digg.

Matt,

if what you say is true, wouldn’t it be so easy for google to have given the real reasons for why they delist or censor certain info/sites? The fact that they have kept quiet about it, and have not said anything about the claims spacewar and prisonplanet are making shows that they probably can’t say anything else. I keep asking them and the only thing I get back is PR stuff.
If they do say something and it is false, they know prisonplanet is going to give them a hard time. Might as well keep quiet.

It’s amazing how many signs people can just ignore or try to explain away and remain in denial. I agree with Robert on the privacy issue. It only gets worse. These companies have a history of disclosing private info, and they are now expecting people to trust them with even more of their data?
http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2006/10/20/you-are-losing-your-privacy-on-the-internet/

For once there’s some sensible comments on slashdot – of course TLA’s (CIA NSA MI5 MI6 – yes I ) are going to be interested in search – they are in the information industry after all.

The CIA backed part of what became Google earth so maybe that what they meant – though the guys site is a complete looney

Any “Real Programmers” who’s worked for company’s/organization on the cutting edge will probably have worked on secret stuff at my first job one of the few times I put on my lab coat was to hang around certain areas one of the labs to politely steer visitors away from certain rigs (not that you could tell what it was from the outside)

Just wait for the Michael Moore movie about this one.

Seriously though, imagine the amount of information Google (GMail included) can provide for your – or mine or any – government, in the name of national security.

Should they do it in order to e.g. protect people’s lifes, that’s a difficult question indeed.

If my son searches for instructions about how to make a bomb – should I get a notification from Google Parental Security Services?

http://www.scroogle.org/

@9 Who says anyone is on a fishing expidition? What proof do you have of that other than your blatant paranoia. Have you read FISA? I’ll make it more simple. Have you read the 4th Amendment? What part of “unreasonable” is unclear to you? Did you see me anywhere in my statements advocate unreasonable searches? There would be nothing UNREASONABLE about capturing search records that might indicate communication with terrorist organizations or planning terrorist acts or any other crime.

Why do you always trot out the same old tired examples that really aren’t related to what we are discussing?

You do also realize that the
Show me evidence where courts are allowing unreasonable searches and seizures resulting in US Citizens being imprisoned and I’ll start accepting your paranoia. You do realize non-citizens do not have ALL the same constitutional protections that citizens have, right? For example, non-citizens do not have habeus corpus rights. Given your “expertise” and paranoia in this arena, as well as your apparent interest in history, I’m sure you are familiar with Johnson v Eisentrager (339 U.S. 763 (1950))

And I’m also sure, since you seem to think you have a good grasp of history, that you know that there a more safeguards against the president and the govt searching and holding people than at anytime in the history of the country. For example, FDR could not get away today with what he got away with in the 40′s . I think you would be pleased with what Congress has passed such strict regulations that prevents the President from acting in such matters without Congressional authorization, which a president could, as recently as the Clinton administration.

But you keep watching out for those black helicopters flying over Half Moon Bay. You never know what they may be planning.

LayZ: >>Why do you always trot out the same old tired examples that really aren’t related to what we are discussing?

The problem is you don’t see any slippery slopes. I do. History is on my side there.

Hmm. Is Google part of the vast CIA/Secret World Government conspiracy to Enslave Us All(TM)? Not so much, I’m willing to bet.

However, what is Google’s core business? Selling *your* data. They aggressively aggregate data, put some pretty nifty data mining interfaces on it, and slap ads and other revenue generators on the side. They already provide direct access to content I create. Not such a problem when they are crawling a public web site, but what about crawling my email? Some of the target ads in Gmail are beginning to give me pause. While you may not be able to read my email, those ads certainly are.

So, let’s say that I would not be a darn bit surprised to know that Google is very actively selling vast amounts of data to various government and industry sources. That’s where the money is, after all, and as far as I know, Google is out for profits just as much as the next corporation. Bulk data gathered from all over is what they have to sell and it will go to the highest bidder.

As I keep trying to tell my buddies who want to demonize Company X and valorize Company Y – Corporations are amoral entities. They exist to make a profit. They will be “good” to the degree it increases profit margins and “bad” to the degree that it harms them.

Given these reports and other news items about Google that make me go “Hmm”, I am going to have to think about how I can limit that company’s access to my data. Not because they are “evil”, but because they are 100% business.

FAW

You assume the slippery slope is towards some sort of totalitarian pseudo government/corporate tri-lateral commission UN managed black helicopter control.

When the slippery slope is moving away from that and has been for the last 1,000 years.

Tin foil hats…ok Scobe.

here is one kind of weird:
http://blog.spywareguide.com/2006/10/google-cia-dhs-kmeth-tinfoilhats.html

ignore my sermon and just focus on the ambient TV- better than a webcam…less obstrusive

http://www.revenews.com/wayneporter/archives/002428.html

I’d link you in, but you hate it- so I sent you a MPoneC instead. Let me know how it went. quality assurance check and all that.

regards,
Wayne

Jake:

“When the slippery slope is moving away from that and has been for the last 1,000 years.”

LOL

You might want to browse the Politics/September 11 section of my website.

Robert,

You should be careful on shedding an unfavorable light on Google. You are jeopardizing PodTech.net’s Web 2.0 exit strategy…to be purchased and marketed by the BEAST!!

Don’t worry about the Religious Right gaining control of the government, it will never happen. You need to worry about the Religious Wrong!