This is not strictly about the Google – CIA relationship, if any. This is about the Google – People – CIA relationship. I am not affiliated to either (except the people, of course) but I see both good things and potential bad things at stake here. The bad things apply if and only if the process isn’t fine tuned and, at the same time, receiving feedback from all the parties involved.
There are a lot of ways in which Google and the CIA could work together for the good of the people. Imagine a counterfeiting operation, for example. A location-based modeling of the places of reported counterfeit goods or finances could lead to a quicker apprehension of the bad guys and to less damage sustained by private institutions, therefore to more good for the people then if the counterfeiting process were to continue (if we presume that the state uses its non-counterfeited resources to support the people and to apprehend the bad guys, of course). Another point would be theft or loss of certain electronics. Items that have either a GPS or a way to link up to the net can be built to automatically let the authorities know where they are, via an automated email, if the devices is broken into, an email that might contain the fingerprint of the thief for example (if the touchscreen/pad is made to collect it). More good for the people (less items lost and stolen), implemented and data-crunched by Google (because they know their stuff when it comes to both soft and hard tools) enforced by the state (or the CIA, in major felony operations). These are only two examples of the mechanisms that should be allowed to work, in this triangular relationship.

Then there’s the matter of abuse. Let’s take online piracy, what can be set up to avoid abuse is a random, but anonymous and voluntary, Jury of 12 that can vote on wiretapping files to decide if they are worthy and ethical to pursue or not. In this scenario, the public could just relax while browsing the web. If that doesn’t work, someone could buy the file-sharing sites that are active and use the advertising income on the site to pay the content providers (for the ripped movies, music and software) according to the number of downloads per item. File-sharing sites can also be a novel way to advertise new content before its general launch to create hype in markets. There are a lot of mechanisms that one could think of to make sure that all three poles of this hypothetical relationship are happy together.
The thing to realize is that Google and the CIA are made of people, and that they can actually help people provided that they implement feedback cycles to their operating procedures that involve constant input from the general population, non-affiliated to neither Google and the CIA.

So, regarding this Robert Steele, pardon me but he somewhat sounds like a comic book character.

Until then, Robert Steele’s words should be taken 100% seriously!!!

David Orrell of the UK ISP Hotchilli Communications let it slip today in a private coffee meeting that they, along with other major ISP hosting providers are actively involved in protecting their home domestic market share and extortionate pricing structures by privately paying Google in developing Google’s local region search criteria so that it actively identifies UK targeted websites that are hosted overseas and penalises them to the extent that they do not show in regional results!
    David suggests that Hotchilli’s Technical Director – Andrew Turner was pleased that “the result of Google’s new search methods are stopping website owners from looking offshore to better providers of a lot lower cost…” thus maintaining bumper profits for UK based TELCO’s and ISP’s. Should this practice be encouraged?

Hopefully Google learned from Bill Clinton that the denial is ofter more costly than the deed when it completely undermines ones integrity.

CIA is *not* very sophisticated. In 1986 they knew the 18 functionalities for an all-source analysis workstation (Google for CATALYST and CIA) and they *still* don’t have it. CIA is a kludge of contractor provided stovepipes, none of which play well together.

I like Google. I think they have enormous potential. I think they are seriously stupid to be playing with CIA, which cannot keep a secret and is more likely to waste time and money than actually produce anything useful.

Best wishes to all,
Robert Steele

So can you think of another way Google might actually work with the government, without violating privacy, and without violating any of its other publicly-stated principles, such as the hard-coding of honeypot terrorist-related search result links, as Raffy suggests? I cannot think of a single scenario in which Google cooperates or colludes, without violating one of its principles. Can you? Would you share it with all of us, so that we might understand a bit better, and feel better about the whole thing?

Just how they interact is the interesting question here.

What you’ve just described is very like what one organization does in the Michael Chrichton novel, State of Fear. In that novel, the organization builds a network of sites with information, propaganda, etc, to tempt would-be eco-terrorists, so that the organization could keep a better eye on what they were interested in, and planning.

Like most Chrichton novels, there was a lot of techie-philosophy, in which the author described how everthing today is networks of things, how the bad guys have their sophisticated networks, and how the only way to join the bad guys in battle is to have your own sophisticated network.

That and a *ton* of information on climate change. I didn’t know California was covered in glaciers 20,000 years ago; guess I should’ve. But that’s another topic …

eg, “Has google released search-related information to any branch of the government, or government subcontractors?”

It just seems like their response comes too easy, because “the statements about google” are so broad.

I think a lot of us would be honored if John B would politely pose these sort of questions.

But, my point is that people were jumping to conclusions that just because the two might be working together, that in fact, it was around sharing user data. There’s nothing in the story that indicates that. Read the original story again. All it alleges is that Google provides “assistance” to the intelligence community by helping them leverage Google’s data mining capabilities.

Working with the government and protecting user data are not necessarily mutually exclusive.