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Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)
- mikece 4y agoThrough In-Q-Tel, the CIA invested in a LOT of companies who were aiming to solve the problems they had. Google was another very early investment by In-Q-Tel on behalf of the NSA because Google's stated goal -- to collect, organize, and make sense of all of the world's data -- overlaps with what the NSA's goal is (and it's possible that Google might come up with better ideas and tech for doing it than the NSA's brain trust). If these agencies were NOT investing in potential technical solutions that would be a cause for concern. Read more about In-Q-Tel and their investments here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
- createdapril24 4y agoNote the "problems they had" aren't necessarily "they needed a better database technology". Oracle's mission is to have all bits of data in the world processed or stored on an Oracle system (source: I worked for Oracle, this was the internal mission statement). Oracle collects: 1. Who is staying in which hotels and in which rooms 2. Who is eating at which restaurants and going to which entertainment facilities 3. Who is getting what health services 4. Who is travelling where across travel industry 5. Who is working for which companies in what roles and how much are they paid This is incredibly powerful intelligence the CIA could not NOT want. Replace "who" in any of the above with a politician in a country of interest, or other person of interest/intelligence target. <strike> It's sort of like Facebook getting CIA funding. CIA definitely has interest to know intimate details of everyone's lives, who is sharing what information with who, and how social fabric in different countries are organized. They/we would be crazy not to. Taking the converse: The CIA wasn't funding Facebook because they really needed to socialize more with friends and family. </strike> Please see thread below. CIA investment in Facebook has not been established.
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoDo you have a link to details about the CIA funding FB? I heard that as a rumor but thought it was debunked
- createdapril24 4y agoHonestly I had not fact checked this. A quick internet search found lots of articles making different claims (CBS News says yes, Reddit says yes, IQT website does not list, Quora says no.) Overall there doesn't appear to be a very strong argument and this Quora article (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-substance-of-the-claim-that-Facebook-is-funded-in-part-by-the-US-government-and-in-particular-a-branch-which-is-associated-with-the-CIA https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-substance-of-the-claim-tha...) makes a compelling case that the connection is too tenuous. I will remove from parent content.
- idiotsecant 4y agoAre you suggesting the CIA has ways to exfiltrate data from Oracle databases assisted by Oracle but without knowledge or consent of the user? That would be a pretty big deal. If not, what are you saying?
- pigeons 4y agoHave you ever looked at the history of Oracle security flaws, as well as their reluctance to improve it? A public resource for this is David Litchfield.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoNot OP. Just saying: [X] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
- astrange 4y agoWhy would you need data to be in a specific brand of database before you can send legal process for it?
- Teever 4y agoThis is both a a very US-centric and trust in authority figures take. For the rest of the world however, and people who understand that power should have limits, and that a distrust in authority figures should be the default state the idea that companies like Oracle and Google are mere extensions of the CIA/NSA is terrifying.
- mikece 4y agoWho said anything about trusting In-Q-Tel, the companies they invest in (ahem, GOOGLE!), or what the agencies are doing with the fruits of their investment? I personally think the CIA should be abolished and the NSA put on a very short leash with lots of oversight. But in terms of doing what they do wisely it cannot be argued that In-Q-Tel gives numerous US Government entities access to IP and tech they otherwise wouldn't have gotten.
- mda 4y agoYou keep saying InQ-Tel invested in Google but apparently it is Bullshit (look at the answers above). How about sticking to truth instead of conspiracy theories?
- rasz 4y agoNot just investment. "Highlands Forum", DLI (NSF, NASA and DARPA), MDDS. Sergey Brin was literally funded by NSA and CIA under MDDS. Google was the result of his research under this grant. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
- jamesredd 4y ago… If there were no CIA agents inside Google that would be a cause for concern. … If the CIA did not control Google that would be a cause for concern. …
- jessaustin 4y agoWell, I'm concerned.
- mda 4y agoYou imply a lot, but apparently the investment to Google, according to wikipedia is because Google bought a company they invested (Keyhole, later become Google earth) and apparently they sold the stocks after the acquisition. Or do you have more info?
- pkaye 4y agoFrom the above link, In-Q-Tel was involved in Keyhole, which was acquired by Google. Can you show a source that In-Q-Tel directly invested in Google earlier? > In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[10] The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth.[11]
- hodgesrm 4y agoInteresting. "Key Hole" is the code name for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite. [0] I never made the connection between the names. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
- unity1001 4y agoSuch investment should never be in the hands of unaccountable, black box organizations.
- lazide 4y agoHow would you stop it? Prohibit opaque block box organizations from spending money? Good luck with that, especially since they’re opaque and black box and all.
- jussion_zoonist 4y agoIIRC Google began with a DARPA grant but they were not directly funded by In-Q-Tel. However, In-Q-Tel invested in a different company that Google acquired which was the basis for Google Earth and through that acquisition In-Q-Tel gained shares in Google.
- stevehawk 4y agoBut some of their products were. Google Earth was an acquisition, Keyhole Inc, and one of their early investors was In-Q-Tel.
- hodgesrm 4y agoThe US military spends a lot of its treasure managing data, so it's not surprising that they would fund database companies to do it better. I got my start in databases while serving in the US Air Force in the early 1980s. Oracle would have been quite interesting for us, had we known about it. It's not much different from how military funding drove advancement of aircraft or integrated circuits.
- trasz 4y agoSame for investments by Chinese intelligence agencies. Right?
- UIUC_06 4y agoWe tend to treat our rivals differently from ourselves. So no.
- trasz 4y agoTo the vast majority of the world, including large part of the West, USA is more hostile than China. So, who is “you”?
- UIUC_06 4y agoHN is a US-based service. By the way, how is China coping with the vast flood of immigrants trying to move there? Oh, that's right -- there aren't any.
- trasz 4y agoDoesn’t matter where HN is, what matters is where the community lives. And large part lives outside US. On immigration to China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China. How’s judiciary in US? Still imprisoning millions of random people for being poor and using them as slave labour?
- UIUC_06 4y agoYour reference is mainly about Chinese nationals returning. 300,000 refugees and 200,000 Africans. Out of over 1 billion. As for "millions of random people for being poor" I think you'll find they were imprisoned for committing crimes, and imprisoned after a jury trial or a plea bargain. As opposed to, I don't know, publishing a newspaper in Hong Kong. Or being Uyghur.
- atemerev 4y agoSo did Google Earth. The Internet itself was funded by ARPA, a DoD agency. I think it is a good thing: the military will always be doing military research, but at least in the US its fruits often become available to the public.
- mikece 4y agoAPRAnet was a project to build a communications network without a centralized node to determine routing so that if large chunks of the physical network were destroyed (nuclear attack is the typical scenario envisioned) then the network would dynamically figure out how to route around the broken/missing network segments and traffic would get through. Rumor is that the first real-world test of this ability was the first Gulf War when the allied coalition physically destroyed upwards of 80% of Iraqi telecoms... but messages on the Iraqi network still got through, albeit delayed after bouncing around alternative routes outside of Iraq before reentering near the destination node.
- mistrial9 4y agono substantiation.. I think the wikipedia article addresses this ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History
- atemerev 4y agoYes, it does: “Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel,[11] and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,[12] for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion.[9]” I have thought that this fact is a common knowledge.
- 50208 4y ago
- binarray2000 4y agoBut not an ordinary welfare queen. People on a welfare can dream of a yacht, a masion, a private jet or young women as partners.
- droidist2 4y agoAnd their own Hawaiian island (well, 98% of a Hawaiian island). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai
- Maursault 4y agoAdmittedly, your point, which I'm assuming is a jokey quip, is somewhat lost on me. Not for nothing, the entire concept of "welfare queen" is both unsupportable and provably false right wing propaganda, and, strictly speaking, fundamentally racist. I have to assume you were unaware.
- jongjong 4y agoUS startups seem to have it so easy compared to companies in other parts of the world. It seems they may have been getting a little extra help from government agencies. I'm starting to realize how difficult it is to compete in the tech sector without government assistance. I thought it was a free market, but it's looking increasingly like a giant clusterfuck of government intervention. It looks nothing like a free market, it looks more like a battlefield and everyone is competing for who can get the most free weapons and ammo from their respective governments (in the form of grants, contracts and beneficial regulations). That would explain why smaller companies cannot compete against the big ones in many sectors; the big players are flush with free government money; how can any small startup compete against that.
- CyanBird 4y agoNot just "a little"... A LOT A good primer on the topic for the interested https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
- jongjong 4y agoI sometimes wondered if the whole 'big data' craze was a symptom of too much government intervention... A projection of the needs of governments (not the needs of people). How valuable is people's data, really? I understand why people who work for the CIA are thirsty for data and believe that data is the most valuable resource in the universe... But why is the industry interested in it to that extent? It's difficult to dispute the value of people's attention and trust, but their data... Common. Data seems more like a bonus; a way to monetize people's attention more efficiently (e.g. targeted ads). The main thing of value here (from a free market perspective) seems to be capturing people's attention in the first place.
- dontknowwhyihn 4y agoThe book “Surveillance Valley” makes a compelling case that the Internet was created with surveillance as its goal from the beginning.
- photochemsyn 4y agoAll the infrastructure is in place to convert the United States to an East German STASI system. Most of the individual personal data that an outfit like STASI would use to control popular opinion (media job opportunities), academic and governmental job opportunities, 'social credit' scores, etc. is already stored the data archives of Google, Facebook, Oracle, ISPs, Apple, the NSA / FBI / CIA files, etc. The only real fix is data privacy laws, which would force the private and public outfits to discard most of their stored data (and enforceable criminal and civil penalites for not doing so).
- larrik 4y agoLaws can be changed, and so can their interpretation. It seems the real fix is nothing short of a clearly-written constitutional amendment. Even then, compare the search and seizure amendment to civil forfeiture...
- strictnein 4y agoWeird to see an old [2014] snarky Gizmodo post show up here, but I digress. Slightly more interesting than this is the "Project Oracle" project description from the CIA, thanks to a FOIA request: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794R000100230024-0.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794R0001002...
- TMWNN 4y ago>Weird to see an old [2014] snarky Gizmodo post show up here mfw you imply that some Gizmodo posts aren't snarky
- chasil 4y ago"What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database." This has not been true for some time. https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle...
- cosmiccatnap 4y ago...that we are aware of
- groby_b 4y agoSure. The same applies to lizard overlords running the world.
- googlryas 4y agoKeep in mind the article was written in 2014. I was at Amazon until near the end of 2013 and we were actively migrating off of oracle at that time, but it was no where near ready when I left.
- ab_testing 4y agoAmazon still runs on Oracle ERP. Even though they removed Oracle databases from AWS and other internal orgs, their own financials are still run in Oracle EBS. Thus the data for all the books bought by a person might still be in Oracle
- chasil 4y agoAny Oracle implementation at Amazon certainly could not scale to do this real-time. Black Friday, and Oracle's inability to scale up to meet it without explosive licensing costs, is a major factor in Amazon's decision to remove Oracle from their sales systems.
- ProAm 4y agoTechnically so was the internet itself.
- dang 4y agoI feel like this has had more threads on HN but here are the related ones I found: Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386824 - Sept 2021 (4 comments) Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8342091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8342091 - Sept 2014 (1 comment)
- seiferteric 4y agoSometime ago I posted this: https://tanelpoder.com/2009/03/14/the-real-history-of-oracle-database-revealed/ https://tanelpoder.com/2009/03/14/the-real-history-of-oracle... probably not true, but fun to think about.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoOutdated stories about the CIA have been on the front page basically every day now. I wonder why?
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoPerhaps to inspire you to find the ones that aren't outdated.
- mulmen 4y agoThe VOIP telco I worked at literally named our CALEA [1] database "CIA". Ironically we couldn't afford another Oracle license for it so it ran on MySQL. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
- kkfx 4y agoRelevant: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794R000100230024-0.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794... But it's not the only, for instance https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci... and https://privacytogo.co/meet-jigsaw-googles-intelligence-agency/ https://privacytogo.co/meet-jigsaw-googles-intelligence-agen...
- midislack 4y agoAll big tech companies were created by the CIA and then "blessed."
- solarkraft 4y ago> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Vox didn't highlight Oracle's CIA origins or its never-ending relationship with governments at all levels. The reason is missing: There's a high likelihood that it was a sponsored article, at least inofficially. Some journalists love to write nice stories about companies - pre-dictated by those companies. I don't have any specific insight here, but Vox aiming to be a "modern" media company seems to be an especially good candidate for such marketing.
- astrange 4y agoOracle doesn't care if you're nice about them or not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
- agumonkey 4y agoIf only Oracle put as much effort into their stock management
- dboreham 4y agoPerhaps we should discuss the origins of web search? And just to give a random data point: I saw the equivalent of Google Earth/Maps demonstrated at a government contractor (to which my company was a supplier of high performance hardware), in 1989.
- treebeard901 4y agoIt probably would not be all that surprising to learn just how many companies are like this. Especially tech companies. It goes a lot deeper due to regulatory capture. Then companies that exist for long periods of time, like the many ones started during and after WW2 have largely merged with the Government just naturally over time. Then consider all the companies that are either too big to fail or exist just because of quanitative easing free money. Many companies are just wholly controlled front companies by the FBI, CIA and other agencies. Then all of the rest are at the mercy of all these other agencies to even operate independently. Capitalism indeed.
- electric_dreams 4y ago
- euroderf 4y ago"In-Q-Tel" sorta sounds like... the question ("Q") at the heart of "Intel". Is this some sort of obscure reference to a trojan installed in Intel processors ?
- advisedwang 4y agoIf a security agency has a backdoor in intel CPUs, it seems unlikely to me that they would go around dropping hints like that.