5 ms·
Through 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 o
by mikece 4y ago
Through 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?
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoYou wouldn't. It just simplifies 'things', from a technical and operational POV.
- idiotsecant 4y agoIn what way does it simplify 'things'?
- itronitron 4y agoNo actually, the problems they had are just that the US intelligence community needed relational databases. Keep in mind that this preceded the internet and online hotel bookings.
- spullara 4y agoThat is a pretty far cry from Oracle having the data, especially pre-cloud. I think you are conflating "an Oracle system" with a system that Oracle actually controls rather than and end user that using the software. This is like saying a hard drive manufacturer has all the data that are on their hard drives.
- akira2501 4y agoYour data is in a piece of software controlled by Oracle. They can easily create a backdoor designed for NSA use. Whether they "have" your data on their hardware or not doesn't make much of a difference in this case.
- spullara 4y agoMaybe don't connect your database to the internet? Which is the normal way to install it locally?
- tyingq 4y agoThere was a time when Oracle sort of worked that way. On-prem Oracle has mostly migrated to an appliance type model where phone-home is standard and almost mandatory. "Exadata".
- akira2501 4y agoIf you connect it to any network at all. Is it beyond the NSA to string together several obscure vulnerabilities to attack a specific target? [1] I mean.. I suppose you could air gap your database, but of what utility is it to you now? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
- mintplant 4y agoI think 'createdapril24 is referring to Oracle's broader data brokerage/marketplace business rather than strictly their on-premise database system business. https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/22/oracle-us-privacy-class-action/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/22/oracle-us-privacy-class-ac...
- 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.