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LINK WITH VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT
Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund "Recorded Future" Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts
Investors at the CIA and Google are backing a company called "Recorded Future" that monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. The news comes amidst Googles so-called "Wi-Spy" scandal, that refers to revelations that Googles Street View cars operating in some thirty countries snooped on private Wi-Fi networks over the last three years.
TRANSCRIPT:
JUAN GONZALEZ: Investors at the CIA and Google are both backing a company that claims to represent the next phase of intelligence gathering, according to a report from Wired. Its called Recorded Future, and it monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. Google has done business with Americas spy agencies before, but this seems to be the first time the CIA and Google have funded the same startup at the same time.
The report comes on the heels of a new opinion poll released by the nonpartisan group Consumer Watchdog that shows nearly two-thirds of Americans are troubled by whats being called Googles "Wi-Spy" scandal. Wi-Spy refers to revelations that Googles Street View cars operating in some thirty countries snooped on private Wi-Fi networks over the last three years. Google has admitted that its cars recorded communications from unencrypted home Wi-Fi networks as they photographed peoples homes for Googles Street View.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, were joined now by two guests. Here in New York, Noah Shachtmans with us. Hes contributing editor at Wired magazine and editor of its national security blog, ""http://www.wired.com/dangerroom">Danger Room," where he broke the story about Google and the CIA both investing in Recorded Future. And were joined in Los Angeles by John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdogs Inside Google project. Hes calling for congressional hearings into the Google Wi-Spy scandal.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Noah, lets start with you. Just lay out what this relationship is. There may be people who dont even know that Street View of Google, that you can go down the streets of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and see peoples houses. And what else did they record?
NOAH SCHACHTMAN: Right, so, you know, Googlewe sort of make an implicit bargain with Google, right? Google reads our email to deliver advertisements. They look at how were traveling from point A to point B as theyas we use Google Maps. They look at our searches as we use Google Search. So we makethey read all that information, but we make a bargain with them that theyre not going to do anything too bad with it, that theyre going to observe their dont be evil mantra. And thats why this latest business arrangement is kind of troubling.
AMY GOODMAN: John Simpson, go further with the Street View and what you found with Wi-Spy.
JOHN SIMPSON: Sure. What most people, I think, realized was that indeed these trucks and vans were taking photographs, but it then developed that they were recording data from open Wi-Fi networks and gathering other information about Wi-Fi networks as they went along. Initially, Google said that they were just locating the networks. And then they said, Oh, my gosh! We made a mistake. We were actually gathering data, which seems tremendously disingenuous when you
AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what you mean when you say theyre
JOHN SIMPSON: learn that they in fact patented the
AMY GOODMAN: John, explain exactly what you mean when you say there werent just taking pictures, but they were gathering data from the Wi-Fi networks as they passed your house.
JOHN SIMPSON: Well, sure, if youif you have a Wi-Fi network and youre sending email messages over it, passwords are going through it when you log on to websites, any of that sort of communications could be sucked up by their Wi-Spy snooping. And not only would it be sucked up, it was recorded on their servers. So there are parts of peoples personal communication that they have in their server network. And what theyre doing with that information is part of the problem. No one from Google has said why they were gathering it, what they intended to do with it, and what they have done with it. Theyve essentially said, Trust us. Were the company that believes 'dont be evil.'
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you say theyre storing it in their servers, one of the amazing things to me has been, as Ive learned more about Google, that they virtually have created these huge tank farms all around the United States where they are storing all this data, and theyre collecting basically more information on the American people and onin the world than practically any other company right now.
Noah Shachtman, Im particularly interested in this issue of this new company, Recorded Future. How exactly willhow exactly is Recorded Future working? What are they doing with the information theyre gathering now for both the CIAwith CIA investment and with Google investment?
NOAH SCHACHTMAN: So, Recorded Future is a company that strips out from web pages the sort of who, what, when, where, whysort of whos involved, you know, where are they going, what kind of events are they going to. And the idea is to find hidden links between actors that might not necessarily have visible links between them. So, for example, if Im going to Aruba and there happens to be, I dont know, you know, a terrorism conference in Aruba, perhaps Im going to that terrorism conference. Thats sort of the idea.
AMY GOODMAN: And how is CIA and Google working together?
NOAH SCHACHTMAN: So, most people dont realize that the intelligence agencies have an investment arm. Its called In-Q-Tel. And they invest money in promising companies, both to make a little cash and also to deliver those promising technologies to the intelligence community. So, in the early part of this decade, for example, In-Q-Tel invested in a company called Keyhole. Keyhole was then bought by Google in 2004 and became the basis of Google Earth, which is now how we can look at all those satellite cameras and what eventually became the basis for the Street View project, right? And what Street View is, is its part of Google Maps. Its a way ofinstead of looking at how you get from point A to point B, its a way to actually see the streets that youre navigating. And so, when Google was taking pictures to develop that sort of 3-D view of the streets you travel on, thats when it got into trouble collecting this Wi-Fi information. So thats how it kind of all ties together.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, theres a higher-level, much larger secret intelligence agency, and its the National Security Agency.
NOAH SCHACHTMAN: Right. So, Google, its relationship with the NSA is unclear, as most things with the NSA are unclear. We know that theyve done business together before. We know that Google sold them some products before, some servers. And we also knowexcuse meor we believe we know, that when Google suffered a pretty vicious hack attack earlier this year, it turned to the NSA. It turned to sort of the information security specialists of the NSA to help them out and try to figure out what was going on. Now, it gets a little bit complicated because that side of the NSA is not quite as black hat as the side that spies on us. Theres actually kind of two divisions within the NSA, one thats relatively benign and one thats relatively not benign. But its stillIts yet another example of how Google and the countrys intelligence agencies are starting to get closer and closer together.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Have there been any attempts in other countries to begin to place limits on some of this cooperation between Google andor their being able to use what theyre doing here in the United States, has spread to other countries?
NOAH SCHACHTMAN: You know, the answer, Im sure, is yes, but I dont have details, Im sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask John Simpson, what are you calling on Congress to do?
JOHN SIMPSON: Well, we want to know exactly what Google was trying to do when it sucked up all this personal communications when it was doing the Wi-Spying. And were also very concerned about precisely the nature of this growing relationship between our intelligence agencies and Google. And we think that both of those things need to be a subject of a hearing. Just like Tony Hayward came in and had to explain the Gulf oil spill, we think that Chairman Eric Schmidt needs to be called before the appropriate committee to explain what I think is the biggest information spill, if you will, in history. Its virtually wiretapping, what they were doing with the Wi-Fi networks. And they need to be called on the carpet to account for that and why they did it. And so far theres been no adequate explanation of what they were trying to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Who was championing this in Congress?
JOHN SIMPSON: The more troubling aspect, too
AMY GOODMAN: John, who was championing this in Congress? And what is Googles response, not to mention the intelligence agency, if you can gather this, to your Inside Google project at Consumer Watchdog?
JOHN SIMPSON: Well, Google has not been our best friend, you could say. In fact, early on, when we put out a press release they didnt like, they actually tried to get our charitable funding revokedcontacted the Rose Foundation and suggested we ought not to be funded, which was not very good. In Congress, so far, we have not had any one respond to the call. We believe that the appropriate committee would be Commerce and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, possibly House Judiciary Committee, because they have jurisdiction over wiretap legislation. So, were still optimistic, particularly when, in the light of our poll, we had overwhelming support for some kind of a hearing from the voters that we polled. We think possibly when the Congresspeople are back in their districts, maybe they will indeed hear some of the concern from their constituents. So were optimistic that there will be a hearing.
AMY GOODMAN: John Simpson, I want to thank you for being with us, director of Inside Google project at Consumer Watchdog. And also thanks to Noah Shachtman, contributing editor at Wired Magazine.
White House visitor logs show that Alan Davidson, Googles director of public policy and government affairs, has had at least three meetings with officials of the National Security Council since the beginning of last year. And John Simpson also has written that based on todays Washington Post series, it appears Google holds classified US government contracts to supply search and geospatial information to the US government. That series, they did last week.
Our kids are gonna have a differant life, for better or worse only time will tell. Until Google browser (Chrome ) was released, their search engine (Google) and their mail client (Gmail) was a very good tool to gather data regarding users interests, yet with Google Chrome they have even more control which obviously, can lead to more accurate results. YouTube is also part of Google, so it makes no difference.
CIA has not exactly a great track record of making ethical decisions that benefit the overall good of humanity, and people worry about WMD, this is going to affect humanity a million times more than any nuclear bomb ever will.
