4 ms·

Google's true origin: NSA research grants for mass surveillance (2017)

29 points by vincent_s 4y ago

hunglee2 4y ago
you have to say it is a superb result. If you were natsec and you wanted to influence the thoughts and behaviours of people in foreign countries, what better way to do so than to produce a tool which those people would use as default to discover 'the truth'. I hope the CIA folks who decided to invest in early Google got just rewards, not just in terms of return to investment, but also national recognition in service to the country
- ShivShankaran 4y ago
  Google is passe now. It's all reddit. Reddit even selected people from NATO for it's content role. Their algorithm automatically pushes to front page anything that the US would like to focus on.
  - hunglee2 4y ago
    yes - TikTok too, amazingly. I think basically those platforms stay on the good side of USGov, so long as they agree to hire a load of natsec operatives into product or oversight positions. That way you have plausible deniability of the existence of a political commissariat in ostensibly private sector organisations. Again, it is laudable - this is strategic planning of the highest order, commendations all round
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 4y ago
> The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995. When I was running a bunch of websites on Drupal, I attended Drupal conferences. Those conferences usually had “birds of a feather” sessions alongside the main conference program. Was that because we were secretly working for the intelligence community? No. That’s just what computer geeks have called informal topic discussions for decades. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/birds-of-a-feather_session https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/birds-of-a-feather_session The article seems to make many such errors or gigantic leaps of logic. For me, this undercuts my willingness to rely upon it as an accurate view of history.
- HillRat 4y ago
  Yeah, it falls into the trap of too many "secret history" pieces, both in terms of failing to understand the specific area of research (such as, in this case, mistaking the term "birds of a feather" for being connected to the concept of a "query flock" in association-rule mining, and then assuming without evidence that both of those terms were related to some concept of tracking people through their online behavior) and drawing too many, and too-thick, connections between loosely- or even unrelated events, people, or groups. It doesn't take much to go from "these are some interesting connections that are worth exploring" to "giant wall o' crazy." This, of course, doesn't change the fact that -- not long after the time period in question -- the IC did start working with the telcos to conduct mass surveillance, but the intimations that they secretly funded Google in order to create a private surveillance state that they could exploit strains credulity, and gives the IC waaaaay too much credit for both foresight and cynicism.

29 points by vincent_s 4y ago

you have to say it is a superb result. If you were natsec and you wanted to influence the thoughts and behaviours of people in foreign countries, what better way to do so than to produce a tool which those people would use as default to discover 'the truth'. I hope the CIA folks who decided to invest in early Google got just rewards, not just in terms of return to investment, but also national recognition in service to the country

ShivShankaran 4y ago
Google is passe now. It's all reddit. Reddit even selected people from NATO for it's content role. Their algorithm automatically pushes to front page anything that the US would like to focus on.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  yes - TikTok too, amazingly. I think basically those platforms stay on the good side of USGov, so long as they agree to hire a load of natsec operatives into product or oversight positions. That way you have plausible deniability of the existence of a political commissariat in ostensibly private sector organisations. Again, it is laudable - this is strategic planning of the highest order, commendations all round

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 4y ago

> The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995. When I was running a bunch of websites on Drupal, I attended Drupal conferences. Those conferences usually had “birds of a feather” sessions alongside the main conference program. Was that because we were secretly working for the intelligence community? No. That’s just what computer geeks have called informal topic discussions for decades. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/birds-of-a-feather_session https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/birds-of-a-feather_session The article seems to make many such errors or gigantic leaps of logic. For me, this undercuts my willingness to rely upon it as an accurate view of history.

HillRat 4y ago
Yeah, it falls into the trap of too many "secret history" pieces, both in terms of failing to understand the specific area of research (such as, in this case, mistaking the term "birds of a feather" for being connected to the concept of a "query flock" in association-rule mining, and then assuming without evidence that both of those terms were related to some concept of tracking people through their online behavior) and drawing too many, and too-thick, connections between loosely- or even unrelated events, people, or groups. It doesn't take much to go from "these are some interesting connections that are worth exploring" to "giant wall o' crazy." This, of course, doesn't change the fact that -- not long after the time period in question -- the IC did start working with the telcos to conduct mass surveillance, but the intimations that they secretly funded Google in order to create a private surveillance state that they could exploit strains credulity, and gives the IC waaaaay too much credit for both foresight and cynicism.