Sunday, September 9, 2018

"Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance" (GOOG)

This is some of what I was so coyly hinting at in the outro from "Facebook and the CIA (FB)":
CIA still laughing at Zuckerberg for thinking he came up with Facebook
...CIA Agent Tom Booker said: “I mean come on, I’ve got shoes older than him and he thinks he invented this incredibly huge communication system and spying tool.
“This all began when he ‘accidentally’ overhead some sexy girls talking about it at college, then was introduced to some computer experts at a frat party who just happened to be 10 years older than everyone else and wearing suits....
Please note: the above is satire, it is "fāke™"
Google on the other hand...
And today's installment, from Quartz, Dec. 8, 2017:
Two decades ago, the US intelligence community worked closely with Silicon Valley in an effort to track citizens in cyberspace. And Google is at the heart of that origin story. Some of the research that led to Google’s ambitious creation was funded and coordinated by a research group established by the intelligence community to find ways to track individuals and groups online.

The intelligence community hoped that the nation’s leading computer scientists could take non-classified information and user data, combine it with what would become known as the internet, and begin to create for-profit, commercial enterprises to suit the needs of both the intelligence community and the public. They hoped to direct the supercomputing revolution from the start in order to make sense of what millions of human beings did inside this digital information network. That collaboration has made a comprehensive public-private mass surveillance state possible today.
The story of the deliberate creation of the modern mass-surveillance state includes elements of Google’s surprising, and largely unknown, origin. It is a somewhat different creation story than the one the public has heard, and explains what Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page set out to build, and why.

But this isn’t just the origin story of Google: It’s the origin story of the mass-surveillance state, and the government money that funded it. 

Backstory: The intelligence community and Silicon Valley
In the mid 1990s, the intelligence community in America began to realize that they had an opportunity. The supercomputing community was just beginning to migrate from university settings into the private sector, led by investments from a place that would come to be known as Silicon Valley.
A digital revolution was underway: one that would transform the world of data gathering and how we make sense of massive amounts of information. The intelligence community wanted to shape Silicon Valley’s supercomputing efforts at their inception so they would be useful for both military and homeland security purposes. Could this supercomputing network, which would become capable of storing terabytes of information, make intelligent sense of the digital trail that human beings leave behind?

Answering this question was of great interest to the intelligence community.

Intelligence-gathering may have been their world, but the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had come to realize that their future was likely to be profoundly shaped outside the government. It was at a time when military and intelligence budgets within the Clinton administration were in jeopardy, and the private sector had vast resources at their disposal. If the intelligence community wanted to conduct mass surveillance for national security purposes, it would require cooperation between the government and the emerging supercomputing companies.
To do this, they began reaching out to the scientists at American universities who were creating this supercomputing revolution. These scientists were developing ways to do what no single group of human beings sitting at work stations in the NSA and the CIA could ever hope to do: gather huge amounts of data and make intelligent sense of it....MUCH MORE
Related:

Privacy Settings: Who Can See Your Facebook Friends List?

Continuing our look at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Via ZH:
http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/FB-CIA.jpg

And From We Are Change.org:

People Are Asking Their Devices If They Are Connected to the CIA (VIDEOS)
In the wake of the WikiLeaks “Vault 7” revelations, worried citizens are now asking their internet-connected devices if they are working with the Central Intelligence Agency, and their answers are fascinating.
A Twitter user named Stephen Beard asked, “Google Home, are you connected to the CIA?”
“I have to admit, I’m not sure,” Google Home responded.
Another user asked their Amazon Echo, “Alexa, do you work for the CIA?”
“No, I’m not employed by them. I am made by Amazon,” Alexa responded.
The user next asked, “Alexa, does Amazon work for the CIA?” This prompted the Echo to turn off, dodging the question.
Another user asked their Alexa, “are you connected to the CIA?” Their device also refused to respond.
Seemingly every user who attempted to ask their Amazon Echo the question received the same response, the device shuts down. While some have argued that it may be due to the virtual assistant not being able to find the answer to the question, the device is actually programmed to respond with “sorry, I can’t find an answer to the questions I heard,” if that is the case....MORE 

And:
BOMBSHELL: Prince Was Secretly Married, Died To Protect CIA Connection !!!
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