Clandestine Operations at Google

eldavojohn writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is running an interesting story about Google's involvement with the CIA, NSA, NOAA and several other agencies. This has been speculated before although now Google seems to have several contracts open with several agencies. From the article, "When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to North Korea, they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc. The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents, marking a small victory for the company and its little-known effort to do business with the government. 'We are a very small group, and even a lot of people in the federal government don't know that we exist,' said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google's federal government sales team and its 18 employees.""

Clandestine?

[kevin_conaway]

I don't see anything clandestine about a software/hardware company providing software/hardware solutions to the Federal government, especially when said information is printed in a nationally recognized newspaper and linked on a major news aggregator.

It seems more like an opportunity to get the Google haters and rumor mongers fired up.

"interesting story" = "warmed over press release"?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

(some newspaper) is running an interesting story about (some company)'s involvement with (government)... From the (original press release), "When the (government) wanted a (product with extensive capabilities), they turned to (company) because (pitch). '...a lot of people in the (target market) don't know that we exist,' said (sales exec), who leads (some company's) government sales team...""

"interesting story" = "warmed over press release"? Zzzzz.....

Re:Do no evil?

[ScentCone]

If the NSA can get to Google

You mean... with a purchase order? To buy search appliances? Just like they also buy air conditioning equipment, sandwiches, and carpeting?

Have they redefined "treason" as well?

Right, because being a vendor to federal IT users is ... treason!

How do you even function, day to day, behind all of that tinfoil? I mean, doesn't it get hot and itchy after a while?

Slashdot post is flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, this slashdot thread is flamebait. Google, like Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, RedHat, Novell, AT&T, and most other large corporations work with and sell to the US Government. How many government databases are on Oracle? How about Oracle+RedHat or Oracle + SUSE. Does this make Oracle evil? RedHat evil? This is mostly not news.

Google is the best in search (currently). They provide appliances that can be used on closed networks (for example classified). There are MANY applications for these devices. The US Government is a BIG customer and can be a good partner. Despite what you may read here, not all the US Government does is evil....

MOD Parent up

[notnAP]

Mod up either as funny or insightful.

Breaking News! (Bah-deep beep... bah-deep beep beep...) Google has sold computers to the NSA. These computers are good for searching databases, something Google has a little experience doing. The NSA could be using these servers to SPY ON YOU! Film at 11.

Staples has also been caught selling pens to the NSA, pens that may have been used to WRITE YOUR NAME ON THE TAB AT THE TOP OF A FOLDER!!!!!

And bring it down to the local level, Jim Stevens, of "Jim's Roach Coach," was seen parking his Yuck Truck outside the caf door of the NSA, selling food at break time to NSA employees, who MAY BE USING THOSE CALORIES RIGHT NOW TO SPY ON YOU!!!!

Trickledown

[pragma_x]

As far as I can tell, there's no reason to label this as "clandestine". It looks to me like GOOG is just doing what publicly held businesses do: make money and court the biggest customers they can.

The upshot to this is that this is one place where the Federal government at large actually provides something for the public good, even if it is a few steps removed from joe sixpack. Since the NSA has some of the most stringent security requirements outside of most casinos, they're likely to push Google to improve their products in ways the rest of us can't. Take Net BSD for example. Anyway, that's likely to trickle down to the rest of us in the form of a more robust line of Google appliances and more. Another possibility is that Google may also have to learn how to become more nimble as a company in order to meet tougher requirements for Government-contract volume, reliability and ease-of-handling-red-tape. Again, that can work out for everyone.

The downside is that throwing Google style power at large, parallelizable computing tasks, might send us rocketing down a rather slippery slope if it were used for less-than-legal *coughATTcough* purposes. Yea, we're all tempted to file that one under "-1 No Duh", but I think it bears mentioning all the same.

Google competes with Lucene

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a company that has supplied TLA's (and other companies) with search products for years, and this doesn't look like much of a story.

This is a fairly generic search product, and with that little revenue, it can't be getting much penetration. Most of the value in these sales is in system integration with other document processing, email, multimedia, and so on, and not the core search engine. It's a battle to close each deal, but usually there's good money in customizing the product to meet each situation.

Google wanted to buy us at one point, but Larry and Sergei were too put off by having to do sales and customer engineering (services model), and went back to their hammocks. Still, I think they could do OK in this market, since their main competitor can't do engineering management to save its life.

what they can't keep updating PROMIS?

[justdrew]

well maybe our tax dollars will finally buy a system that works for a change. there's no more PROMIS's out there to steal, so gotta pay for new development I guess.

I have a different take on this.

[John Sokol]

99% of us are really doing the most mundane of things, and little that any government agency would care about.
  Heck we would even had a hard time even figuring out how to do something they would even care about.

  This stuff where domestic terrorist spying was used against Eliot Spitzer's bank transactions is just plain wrong. But in the end there is no point it crying about it, again most of us will also not be worth bothering with. I am more concerned with then starting to going after tax evaders or pot smokers, by wholesale automated domestic spying.

  From my former hacking past. If they thought you were involved in something they'd just ransack your house, empty it and deny doing it. google "steve jackson games" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games [wikipedia.org] for example. The Wiki entry doesn't do justice to the severity of what really happened.

    So electronically seeing everything I am doing so they can see it's really nothing of any interest to them is better at least for me on some level.

  It's been my experience with cops and other groups like this that if you walk around with black cloths and black ski mask at night this will draw far more attention if you'd planning on doing something wrong then if you wore a bright orange reflective jacket and helmet, and white overalls in the middle of the afternoon.

  In black they will arrest first and ask questions later where with the bright uniform, you just look like your supposed to be there, and never get a second glance.

  Same with technology, I have friends that do everything with PGP, 3DES, AES etc. It will only make them get put under more scrutiny.

  I'd bet I were planning on doing something wrong that I could get away with so much more if I just keep everything in clear plain text, just for the fact that they are expecting people to act secretive and raise a red flag when doing something wrong.

  On 9/11 they were looking for all kinds of secret dangerous thing, explosives, and poisons etc..

  But no it was Box Cutters, We are talking about a few f**king 99 Cent box cutters that took down the 2 tallest building in the United States, and brought our economy to a stall, started 2 wars, and cost us Billions upon Billions looking for all of the wrong things and push our gas prices to $4 per gallon, and it still not over. That box cutter might even escalate with WW III.

Albert Einstein quote - I don't know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones.

This is more damage then what we could ever do with Billions of dollars of super secret high tech aircraft.

  This an example where KISS - Keep it stupid and simple is most effective.

    If you think about all of the homeland security, there is still painfully little they can do against the box cutter type of attack. Something so mind boggling trivial and stupid you'd never think about it.
  But it's these things that could lead to a terrifying chain reaction.

  So if all my docs are up on Google and easily readable, these numb nuts of the government are far less likely to even notice me or bother me, then if I were trying to pass around encrypted docs, then they will spend millions to decode them and then start monitoring my every action. Because If I am hiding something I must be doing something wrong?

They never believe it was just grandma's cookie recipe as you try to explain this while being water boarded.

Re:The NSA has always done this

[beav007]

Contrary to the beliefs of most American citizens, the USA is not the world. It is in fact April 1 here, and has been for 8 and a half hours. It had been for 5 and a half hours when you posted:

by chunk08 (1229574) on Tuesday April 01, @05:30AM (#22925160)

Due to an invention called "timezones", virtually everyone around the world gets to experience midday when the sun is highest in the sky. In fact, traveling across these "timezones" allows people, objects, and data, to travel through time, both forwards and backwards.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm about to send this message through time to the previous day - I bid you adieu...

Re:Needs to be said

[demachina]

During the 1930's Nazi Germany was one of the few economies that was booming while most of the rest of the world was grappling with depression. Germany's depression was in the 20's thanks to losing World War I and war reparations. As a result pretty much every American company was doing business with them because they were buying stuff when no one else was. The American upper class and big business was also pretty right leaning at the time because the Soviet Union and labor unions were the big threat to them. Nazi Germany and big business were natural allies in the 30's. It was German industrialists who put Hitler in power because they were more afraid of Communism and labor unions than they were the Nazi's. Fritz Thyssen in particular was the rich German industrialist who facilitated Hitlers rise. His banker/broker in the U.S. happened to be George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush [wikipedia.org]. Prescott's Union Banking Corporation was shut down after Pearl Harbor under the trading with the enemy act.

There are some distinct parallels between American business and Nazi Germany in '30's and American business and China in the 21st century. China has transformed in to a Fascist regime with a cheap, repressed, work force just like Nazi Germany. While the economies in the U.S. and Europe are floundering, China is a very profitable place to do business. If a place is profitable business men almost never pass it up on the grounds the government is brutal or repressive. In fact big business really likes repressive regimes as long as they are anti communist and they respect private ownership of capital. That's why the U.S. has propped up so many dictators over the last 100 years. That why when China abandoned communism for capitalism western business rushed there and embraced them with open arms, though their repressive one party state hadn't change at all, it just transformed overnight from Communism to Fascism and truth be told big business just LOVES Fascism. Fascim is pretty close to the ideal system for big business as long as you are on the good side of the party in power.