Text Fwd: [Tom Burghardt] Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy - Big Brother is only a "Ping" or Mouse Click Away

Global Research, October 11, 2010
Antifascist Calling, 2010-10-10
Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy: Big Brother is only a "Ping" or Mouse Click Away
By Tom Burghardt

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: "You're acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted."-- Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

What do Google, the CIA and a host of so-called "predictive behavior" start-ups have in common?

They're interested in you, or more specifically, whether your online interests--from Facebook to Twitter posts, and from Flickr photos to YouTube and blog entries--can be exploited by powerful computer algorithms and subsequently transformed into "actionable intelligence."

And whether the knowledge gleaned from an IP address is geared towards selling useless junk or entering a name into a law enforcement database matters not a whit. It's all "just data" and "buzz" goes the mantra, along what little is left of our privacy and our rights.

Increasingly, secret state agencies ranging from the CIA to the National Security Agency are pouring millions of dollars into data-mining firms which claim they have a handle on who you are or what you might do in the future.

And to top it off, the latest trend in weeding-out dissenters and nonconformists from the social landscape will soon be invading a workplace near you; in fact, it already has.

Welcome to the sinister world of "Precrime" where capitalist grifters, drug- and torture-tainted spy shops are all laboring mightily to stamp out every last vestige of free thought here in the heimat.

The CIA Enters the Frame

In July, security journalist Noah Shachtman revealed in Wired that "the investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time--and says it uses that information to predict the future."

Shachtman reported that the CIA's semi-private investment company, In-Q-Tel, and Google Ventures, the search giant's business division had partnered-up with a dodgy outfit called Recorded Future pouring, according to some estimates, $20 million dollars into the fledgling firm.

A blurb on In-Q-Tel's web site informs us that "Recorded Future extracts time and event information from the web. The company offers users new ways to analyze the past, present, and the predicted future."

Who those ubiquitous though nameless "users" are or what they might do with that information once they "extract" it from the web is left unsaid. However, judging from the interest that a CIA-connected entity has expressed in funding the company, privacy will not figure prominently in the "new ways" such tools will be used.

Wired reported that the company, founded by former Swedish Army Ranger Christopher Ahlberg, "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."

"The cool thing is" Ahlberg said, "you can actually predict the curve, in many cases."

And as for the search giant's interest in "predicting the future" for the secret state, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Ventures sold equipment and expertise to America's shadow warriors.

While the firm may pride itself on the corporate slogan, "don't be evil," data is a valuable commodity. And where's there value, there's money to be made. Whether it comes in the form of "increasing share value" through the sale of private information to marketeers or state intelligence agencies eager to increase "situational awareness" of the "battlespace" is a matter of complete indifference to corporate bean counters.

After all, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC last year, "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

But that standard, "only bad people have something to hide," is infinitely mutable and can be stretched--or manipulated as has so often been the case in the United States--to encompass everything from "Papist" conspiracies, "illegal" migrants, homosexuality, communism, drug use, or America's latest bête noire: the "Muslim threat."

Schmidt went on to say that "the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And we're all subject, in the U.S., to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

In February, The Washington Post reported that "the world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity."

"The alliance" between Google and NSA "is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications," the Post alleged.

An anonymous source told the Post that "the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data."

Really?

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