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This: This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now At some point we need to just say it some of the largest tech companies are basically N

This: This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now At some point we need to just say it some of the largest tech companies are basically NSA+CIA partners and we're well on our way to having Big Tech completely integrated into NSA and CIA and DoD

zip1234 6y ago
The government has used Big Tech forever. Oracle, Microsoft, Apple products have been used by NSA+CIA for about as long as those companies have had products. Yes, those companies sell to the government. They want to make money and the government has money.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Obligatory link to Steve Blank's recounting of SV's early days (1950-1980). https://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-part-v-happy-100th-birthday-silicon-valley/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-sili... https://steveblank.com/2009/04/06/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-secret-history%E2%80%9D-part-iii-the-most-important-company-you-never-heard-of/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/06/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-... https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
- trenchgun 6y ago
  Yep, and IBM helped nazis to run their concentration camps. Technology is power.
- unionpivo 6y ago
  There is a difference between selling your product to government and working with government. I am pretty sure USA government buy's plenty of stuff from Chinese companies like everbody else does. Doesn't mean Chinese companies are working with it.
typon 6y ago
"The sinister Huawei has close ties with the Chinese government. Our companies can't compete on a level playing field!"
- kube-system 6y ago
  Tech is in bed with the government everywhere on the planet, and has been for a long time. The question has never been about fairness, it is: who has your interests in mind?
  - bavell 6y ago
    As hard as it may be to accept, this is the reality we live in.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    None of them particularly care about the average citizens interests, so treating the two similarly seems fair.
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      Who would you rather have logs of all your Internet activity: your own government, or another government thousands of miles away that is increasingly at odds with country's?
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        This is never an either/or situation, it is neither/both.
        pc86 6y ago
        It is increasingly "both, and do nothing about it" or "both, and be vocally opposed to it, and potentially cause issues for yourself x years from now."
      - 6y ago
dwd 6y ago
All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests - for a long time that was primarily the military/industrial complex followed by oil/gas. We're now just seeing the focus switch to supporting big tech as a priority.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It's still distressing to see those intelligence agencies further entrench themselves into fields perfectly suited for a surveillance state. Their reputation makes trusting that they won't abuse it difficult. It may suit national interest, but it bodes poorly for the public interest.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dwd 6y ago
    They help the companies, who help the Government in return. And the whole conspiracy is carried on via the revolving doors of influence and networks of who knows who. Where the public suffers is that it's their tax money that funds this rather than going towards education, health, essential services, better wages, social and economic mobility - the list goes on.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >They help the companies, who help the Government in return. And the whole conspiracy is carried on via the revolving doors of influence and networks of who knows who. Except now one of the ways the companies can help the government is with readymade worldwide surveillance. That is much scarier than anything Dole could offer.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  United Fruit.
01100011 6y ago
The government created Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a customer and you never hear their name.
- propogandist 6y ago
  Google bought Keyhole (now Google Maps) from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm [1] -- this was when Eric Schmidt was CEO. Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year. Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of location triangulation. This is a constantly updating map of every SSID in existance, including unique radio devices in a given location. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, now heads up the DoD's advisory board on new technology [3] [1] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-privacy-lawsuit-settlement/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-priva... [3] https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/google-executive-schmidt-to-head-new-dod-advisory-board/ https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/go... ||| https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display/Article/1377390/dr-eric-schmidt/ https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display...
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Schmidt also _visited_ Assange, https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447 https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...
  - birdyrooster 6y ago
    Allegedly, Schmidt also games politics, albeit unsuccessfully, he spent millions on The Groundwork trying to prop up Hillary's 2016 campaign only charging them ~$700k (at one point they had 70 SWE/SRE on staff with most focusing on her campaign's needs for an entire year, they were only a couple blocks away in NYC from Hillary HQ). The company he invested in, Timshel, folded the same year as Hillary lost the election. I'd bet anyone money he wrote off his illegal in-kind contributions as 1099 losses. Check out his emails with Robby Mook.
artificialLimbs 6y ago
Well on our way? lol... I wish we were only still in that stage...
1DRACOSEA8 6y ago
Out with the old, they’ll never coerce Mileva or Albert. With the advent of hashless trees in stateless epoch-quiescent petri nets, the stores are only exposed to the primary key holder and it would be almsosy impossible, unfeasible, and cumbersome to hash brown it, prune it, collate the byte stings...it would be less than above average intelligence
GrimRe 6y ago
It sounds tinfoils hat crazy because it is. No we do need to say that because is patently untrue.
arethuza 6y ago
Even if they weren't explicit partners it seems highly likely that intelligence agencies would get covert access to the resources of the main web companies - they are just too tempting a target not to.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Do you have any evidence for that or just speculating because some business/government people move around in the same business arena?

zip1234 6y ago

The government has used Big Tech forever. Oracle, Microsoft, Apple products have been used by NSA+CIA for about as long as those companies have had products. Yes, those companies sell to the government. They want to make money and the government has money.

ethbr0 6y ago
Obligatory link to Steve Blank's recounting of SV's early days (1950-1980). https://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-part-v-happy-100th-birthday-silicon-valley/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-sili... https://steveblank.com/2009/04/06/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-secret-history%E2%80%9D-part-iii-the-most-important-company-you-never-heard-of/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/06/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-... https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
trenchgun 6y ago
Yep, and IBM helped nazis to run their concentration camps. Technology is power.
unionpivo 6y ago
There is a difference between selling your product to government and working with government. I am pretty sure USA government buy's plenty of stuff from Chinese companies like everbody else does. Doesn't mean Chinese companies are working with it.

typon 6y ago

"The sinister Huawei has close ties with the Chinese government. Our companies can't compete on a level playing field!"

kube-system 6y ago
Tech is in bed with the government everywhere on the planet, and has been for a long time. The question has never been about fairness, it is: who has your interests in mind?
- bavell 6y ago
  As hard as it may be to accept, this is the reality we live in.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  None of them particularly care about the average citizens interests, so treating the two similarly seems fair.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    Who would you rather have logs of all your Internet activity: your own government, or another government thousands of miles away that is increasingly at odds with country's?
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      This is never an either/or situation, it is neither/both.
      - pc86 6y ago
        It is increasingly "both, and do nothing about it" or "both, and be vocally opposed to it, and potentially cause issues for yourself x years from now."
    - 6y ago

dwd 6y ago

All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests - for a long time that was primarily the military/industrial complex followed by oil/gas. We're now just seeing the focus switch to supporting big tech as a priority.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
boomboomsubban 6y ago
It's still distressing to see those intelligence agencies further entrench themselves into fields perfectly suited for a surveillance state. Their reputation makes trusting that they won't abuse it difficult. It may suit national interest, but it bodes poorly for the public interest.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dwd 6y ago
  They help the companies, who help the Government in return. And the whole conspiracy is carried on via the revolving doors of influence and networks of who knows who. Where the public suffers is that it's their tax money that funds this rather than going towards education, health, essential services, better wages, social and economic mobility - the list goes on.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    >They help the companies, who help the Government in return. And the whole conspiracy is carried on via the revolving doors of influence and networks of who knows who. Except now one of the ways the companies can help the government is with readymade worldwide surveillance. That is much scarier than anything Dole could offer.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
United Fruit.

01100011 6y ago

The government created Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a customer and you never hear their name.

propogandist 6y ago
Google bought Keyhole (now Google Maps) from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm [1] -- this was when Eric Schmidt was CEO. Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year. Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of location triangulation. This is a constantly updating map of every SSID in existance, including unique radio devices in a given location. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, now heads up the DoD's advisory board on new technology [3] [1] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-privacy-lawsuit-settlement/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-priva... [3] https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/google-executive-schmidt-to-head-new-dod-advisory-board/ https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/go... ||| https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display/Article/1377390/dr-eric-schmidt/ https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display...
- sitkack 6y ago
  Schmidt also _visited_ Assange, https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447 https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Allegedly, Schmidt also games politics, albeit unsuccessfully, he spent millions on The Groundwork trying to prop up Hillary's 2016 campaign only charging them ~$700k (at one point they had 70 SWE/SRE on staff with most focusing on her campaign's needs for an entire year, they were only a couple blocks away in NYC from Hillary HQ). The company he invested in, Timshel, folded the same year as Hillary lost the election. I'd bet anyone money he wrote off his illegal in-kind contributions as 1099 losses. Check out his emails with Robby Mook.

artificialLimbs 6y ago

Well on our way? lol... I wish we were only still in that stage...

1DRACOSEA8 6y ago

Out with the old, they’ll never coerce Mileva or Albert. With the advent of hashless trees in stateless epoch-quiescent petri nets, the stores are only exposed to the primary key holder and it would be almsosy impossible, unfeasible, and cumbersome to hash brown it, prune it, collate the byte stings...it would be less than above average intelligence

GrimRe 6y ago

It sounds tinfoils hat crazy because it is. No we do need to say that because is patently untrue.

arethuza 6y ago

Even if they weren't explicit partners it seems highly likely that intelligence agencies would get covert access to the resources of the main web companies - they are just too tempting a target not to.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Do you have any evidence for that or just speculating because some business/government people move around in the same business arena?