“For example, most people know Google Earth, but many may not realize that the original version of the software was evaluated and supported by the intelligence community well before Google.” CIA Brian Goral

There is no secret about the CIA, and other US Intelligence agencies, being involved in the early development stages of major Software projects. Google Earth and Palantir Technologies come to mind. Now, a CIA officer claims the Agency developed FACEBOOK too! Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

FEBRUARY 2017. UPDATE. French President Francois Hollande has accused Russia of trying to interfere in the upcoming Presidential campaign. At the request of several Intelligence Agencies, Facebook and Google are joining forces in France to take a stand against ‘fake news’ propaganda. But some fear that the cure might be worse than the disease. RELATED POST: French 2017 Presidential Election — Facebook and Google to tackle ‘fake news’ stories

CIA-Google Joint Ventures

The CIA have also gone into joint ventures with Google, most recently in “Recorded Future” which is a company that strips out from web pages, data about who is going to where and linking all the data together. CIA Brian Goral explains the deal:

The one role and business model I can speak to most freely — because it is unclassified — is my last one: managing the business relationship with the nongovernmental venture capital firm known as In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel was founded to help the CIA and other members of the intelligence community such as the FBI make strategic investments in new technologies from the startup world that would cost much more time and expense to attempt to recreate in-house. For example, most people know Google Earth, but many may not realize that the original version of the software was evaluated and supported by the intelligence community well before Google. Since the government cannot make investments for profit, when Google bought all the rights to the software, the CIA, with In-Q-Tel, directed the profits from the original investment to other startup companies to help advance additional new products that would benefit both the commercial world and the government. It’s an excellent model which has really grown over the years.

Palantir Technologies

Palantir Technologies, Inc. is a private American software and services company, specializing in big data analysis. Founded in 2004, Palantir’s original clients were federal agencies of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC). In-Q-tel, the venture arm of the CIA, funded the projet right from the start with 2 US$ million.

Palantir developed its technology by computer scientists and analysts from intelligence agencies over three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel. The software concept grew out of technology developed at PayPal to detect fraudulent activity, much of it conducted by Russian organized crime syndicates. The company said computers alone using artificial intelligence could not defeat an adaptive adversary. Palantir proposed using human analysts to explore data from many sources, called intelligence augmentation. [WIKIPEDIA] RELATED POST: In-Q-Tel: Like Father, Like Son RELATED POST: DGSI Lacks Big Data Mining Tools, Turns to PALANTIR For Help RELATED POST: CIA PALANTIR Sues Early Investor

By the way, Silk announced that it had been acquired by Palantir in an email to users sent on Wednesday 10 August 2016.

A blog post published on its official site says that:

“The company realized that we could work on even bigger and more important data problems with an incredibly talented team – even if it meant no longer working on the Silk product.”

Facebook?

Now, a CIA officer claims the Agency developed FACEBOOK too! CIA Agent Tom Booker said so in a recent interview.

“I mean come on, I’ve got shoes older than him and he thinks he invented this incredibly huge communication system and spying tool. This all began when he ‘accidentally’ overhead some sexy girls talking about it at college, then was introduced to some computer experts at a frat party who just happened to be 10 years older than everyone else and wearing suits. We only chose him because he seemed astonishingly gullible.”

Interview with Noah Shachtman [WIRED]

Keyhole was another company that IN-Q-TEL invested in that eventually got acquired by Google and became the basis for Google Earth. INQTEL has invested in Nokia, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, IBM, Google, RIM, Greylock partners, Visible and many others. Some of this technology allows for agencies to easily shift through tweets, Facebook status’s and blog posts.

REFERENCES

CIA still laughing at Zuckerberg for thinking he came up with Facebook

Palantir acquired a Dutch startup that creates data visualisations

A man who worked for the CIA for 15 years tells us what it was really like to have a top-secret job

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Is the CIA behind FACEBOOK?