In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Google feigned shock and dismay at revelations that the NSA (National Security Agency) had been using the network to spy on millions of American citizens. Fearing a backlash from users concerned about an invasion of privacy, Google has asked the NSA for permission to be more transparent so users can see they’re only snooping when the feds tell them to. Nice try, Google, but it’s really no big secret that you’ve been spying on users for years.
In June Kurt Nimmo reveals that Google has not only been spying on users, it’s collaborating with the CIA in the process. [Google and the CIA] recently decided to back a company called Recorded Future. It specializes in analyzing websites, blogs, social networks, and Twitter accounts to establish relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents.
Noah Shactman, writing for Wired, says, The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online ‘momentum’ for any given event.
Nimmo also reveals that the CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, provided seed money for Keyhole, Inc., a software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications. Keyhole, Inc., was acquired by Google in 2004 and provided Google Earth with its 3D earth visualization.
And in March, Google agreed to pay $7 million to settle complaints about unauthorized data collection. The company was accused of data theft when it used Google Street View to gather massive amounts of personal information of Wi-Fi users.
And let’s not forget Google’s Intuitive Search algorithms and Google Instant Search that enable the company to see everything you see when you’re surfing the web so they can easily serve you up just the right advertisements. Or the fact that Google is also aligning itself with big-name online retailers in an effort to shut out small business owners all by virtue of is invasive, intrusive algorithms.
And last but not least, Google was just in the news last week when it was revealed that CEO Eric Schmidt was attending this year’s Bilderberg meeting alongside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
So there’s really no need for Google to pretend that they care about being transparent for their users. They’ve never worried about it before why start now?