History

March 8, 2019 6:21 AM

Two decades ago, the US intelligence community worked closely with Silicon Valley in an effort to track citizens in cyberspace. And Google is at the heart of that origin story.
posted by infini (9 comments total)

Thank goodness Silicon Valley is filled with libertarians who resisted this massive invasion of privacy and personal liberty by the Federal government.
posted by gauche at 7:21 AM on March 8, 2019 [10 favorites]

You know what else DARPA funded? This very Internet. Beware!
posted by Nelson at 7:28 AM on March 8, 2019 [12 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Facebook, Google and Amazon.

I mean, FUCK YEAH.

But, honestly, how are they not going to use every tool at their disposal to ensure she's not elected? I mean this is like loading your gun, handing it to your enemy, and saying, in 18 months I'm going to want that back, and if I do get it back, I'm going to shoot you.

Is the strategy that she thinks she can use the threat of prosecution for influencing politics to keep them from traceably doing just that? My brain hurts.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:18 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

(If someone wants to make that an FPP be my guest, I think there's a lot there.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:18 AM on March 8, 2019

SeanMPuckett -- that's just the beginning of the question about how tech, media and finance -- most of whose executives, to say the least of rank of file, dislike Trump a lot -- are going to deal with the elections next year. I think for now they're hoping for moderate Democrats to win the internecine battles, but I'm not sure that's a realistic assumption at all.
posted by MattD at 8:23 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

Steve Blank: The Secret History of Silicon Valley. It goes all the way back to the start, folks.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:33 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Digital Age Expanded the NSA’s Mission (LAT, July 8, 2013)

Getting the data has always been easier than making sense of it. So the NSA developed its own tools to tap the vast pools of information. In 2008, agency engineers created Accumulo, a data storage and retrieval system based on Google's Big Table system. Sqrrl Data, a start-up company in Cambridge, Mass., this month began a commercial version of Accumulo for real-time data mining. Most of the founders of Sqrrl Data are former NSA employees. Accumulo allowed the NSA to examine disparate data sets and find connections, said a former NSA operator who worked with it.

Spinoffs from Spyland (MIT Technology Review, March 18, 2014)

Most recently, the NSA’s revamp included a sweeping effort to dismantle hundreds of single-purpose databases, or “stovepipes,” and switch to flexible cloud computing, where data is spread across thousands of servers. In fact, in 2008, NSA brass ordered the agency’s computer and information sciences research organization to create a version of the system Google uses to store its index of the Web and the raw images of Google Earth.

[...] Over the summer, when debate broke out over NSA surveillance of Americans and others, Sqrrl tried to keep a low profile. But since then, it has found that its connection to the $10-billion-a-year spy agency is a boost, says Ely Kahn, Sqrrl’s head of business development and a cofounder. “Large companies want enterprise-scale technology. They want the same technology the NSA has,” he says.

posted by Little Dawn at 9:33 AM on March 8, 2019

What surprised me was that this article in the OP was bylined December 2017.
posted by infini at 9:47 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

In more recent news: Banks bow to pressure to stop profiting from Trump’s immigration policy, but Big Tech remains defiant (WaPo)

Activists, who waged a two-year campaign against JPMorgan’s investments, hope that mounting public pressure will prod other financial giants, such as Bank of America, to follow suit. But they acknowledge that it’s much harder to persuade tech firms such as Amazon, Palantir and Microsoft to withdraw from lucrative federal contracts with agencies charged with mass surveillance and deportation.

posted by Little Dawn at 7:49 PM on March 10, 2019