Google and CIA Plough Millions Into Huge ‘Recorded Future’ Monitoring Project
by Steve Watson Google's cosy relationship with the U.S. spy network has once again been thrust into the spotlight as the company is reported to have jointly invested with the CIA in an Internet monitoring project that scours Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, and can also "predict the future".
Google Ventures, the investment arm of Google, has injected a sum of up to $10 million, as has In-Q-Tel -- which handles investments for the CIA and the wider intelligence network -- into a company called Recorded Future.
The company describes its analytics as "the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence".
Wired's defence analyst, Noah Schachtman, has a detailed report on the joint venture:
"...it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents -- both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine "goes beyond search" by "looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events."
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online "momentum" for any given event."
Recorded Future "continually scans thousands of news publications, blogs, niche sources, trade publications, government web sites, financial databases and more," according to it's portfolio.
It sifts through millions of posts and conversations taking place on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon to "assemble actual real-time dossiers on people."
It is also being integrated with Google Earth, which, as Schachtman points out in his piece, was seeded with In-Q-Tel/CIA investment. This integration will allow real time tracking of the locations of persons or groups as part of the overall intelligence dossier.
A promotional video shows the company's real time browser-operated data mining engine at work:
Of course, Recorded Future is sold as "terrorism analysis", however the information scouring engine clearly extends beyond that to include crime, indictments and civil court cases etc. In this context, the ability to predict "future curves" is one small step away from Minority Report policing technology. Indeed, analytics are already being used by the Memphis Police Department, whose Operation Blue CRUSH uses predictive analytics by IBM.
Recorded Future takes in vast amounts of personal information such as employment changes, personal education and family relations. The video also shows categories covering pretty much everything else, including entertainment, music and movie releases, as well as other innocuous things like patent filings and product recalls.
The news comes at the same time as revelations that the government is proposing to grant the FBI powers to force firms such as ISPs to hand over an individual's data.
There is also no doubt that Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government's drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for restricting the openness of the Internet, having previously worked with the NSA and the CIA.
The recent scandal involving the company's street view roaming vehicles accessing the wi-fi details of internet users and mapping their online activities has also raised serious questions over intelligence links. This latest development will only enhance those concerns.
Please note: InformationLiberation is neither liberal or conservative. When one takes the time to research the "liberal elite," whom the conservatives oppose, and the "conservative elite," whom the liberals oppose, one finds both "elite" are one and the same. "Liberal" or "Conservative" is not a substantive choice, it is only the carefully crafted illusion of a choice, for both parties come together when they are instructed to.
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, 1933
"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure."
Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, in the July 26th, 1936 issue of The New York Times.
If you care to know who runs the world you live in, view these films. If you care not then I leave you with this quote to ponder:
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."
Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
Audio - Transcript
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
The Century of the Self: The Untold History of Controlling the Masses Through the Manipulation of Unconscious Desires
Operation Gladio: "One of the most secret programs that ever existed"
Print
ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization
Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
Feds Ignore Due Process, First Amendment, Shut Down 73,000 Blogs
Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown
New Bill Gives Obama 'Kill Switch' To Shut Down The Internet
The "Tax Mahal": A Shrine to Corporate Socialism
Bilderberg 2010: Between the sword and the wall
Obama: Life Imprisonment Without Trial