Hand in glove: Google and the US State Dept

The Google Revolution

Will Google settle for being a tool of the government for long? Once the government becomes reliant on Google's services, how long before one swallows the other? Or am I being dense and its already happened?

Encouraged to defect?

"...nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition."

Huh? I should think we would want to encourage the Syrian people to stand their ground, and preserve THEIR claim to their very homeland, instead of essentially helping them to evacuate the country.

Double Standards, As Usual

I LOVE how the sketchiest of connections is enough for the spooks to put a citizen under total surveillance, or even send a drone with a missile, but we're obliged to give the benefit of the doubt when a well-connected new representative of a major tech company with a sensitive government background is jet-setting around with military escort and instigating such curious decisions and projects.

Even worse are those who are blind to this; as if we "agree" that agents of Uncle Sam are inherently trustworthy and we, our neighbors + dog deserve to be under much tighter scrutiny.

This really isn't new news...

Google has had this potential for a very long time.

You can even see the ties to the US Government way back when Google first started using Moffet Field.

The sad thing is that Google has a monopoly and it won't be stopped until people start removing google analytics from their sites. (Hint, Hint, El Reg.)

Googhoul is God!

Obama is Dog...................

Is this the administration outsourcing things, or is this a corporation aquiring parts of the administration, or a bit of both?

Do we have someone competent on the legal side of this amongst us who can shed some light on this?

Google Play Services

Take you're Android phone, find "Google Play Services", this is a service that is REQUIRED by Google's contract with handset makers to be running on your device.

This app lets Google install software onto your device without you knowing. It runs all the time, and cannot be stopped, if you try to remove it, it will remove every app on your phone. Yet if you can root the phone and kill it, then it's not used to run the apps.

It accesses everything from Wifi, network, location, audio, video, SMSs, messaging, apps, contacts. Nearby devices even. It can do EVERYTHING it wants under Google remote control. Which in turns means every snoop around the world has that access and that control.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34444233

Take a look around you, how many android devices are withing earshot of you? Those potentially are listening. How many camera phones are watching you now?

So you are a journalist, a politician, perhaps you've expressed a view that a spook disagrees with, or work at a company that is targeted for industrial spying. Well your phone could be tasked with spying on you.

Do you believe big multinationals should pay their taxes? You might think its radicals or extremists that are spied on (and that you're safe because you're not radical or extreme), but this was one of the issues that the UK "Forward Intelligence Unit" spied on in 2010. Daring to demand companies pay their taxes got you put under police surveillance. Yet surely that's the consensus? That companies pay their taxes?

Without any checks on surveillance, and with nobody to answer to, the police can target you for their surveillance fishing without you ever knowing or having the right of challenge. Your private discussions recorded, your location tracked, your phone calls monitored. There's zero accountability and zero penalty for misuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Search on "COINTELPRO", this was the US version of political surveillance, with FBI targetting people expressing political views at odds with the Presidents. Read the Church Committee report. That was then, now things are MUCH WORSE. Look at where Theresa May's lot are now, far far far beyond the nightmare scenario of the Church Report.

Google is really....

The Parallax Corporation....

Google...

...they want ALL of your shit.

https://i.chzbgr.com/full/6552323328/h1AA4589E/

What's to Complain About Here?

This news story seems to just show that Google is acting in an exemplary and public-spirited manner for a private company, doing more than its duty to help work towards peace and freedom.

Project Lune

So now Project Lune makes (more) sense. If a territory/region has no usable Internet, potential terrorists can't be tracked. So just send the balloons up, give the masses an Internet connection, then send the spooks in. Thank you Google!

Polarisation filters

Here's a cruel thought experiment:

If we were in a Universe where Google were actually Not Evil (for your own personal definition of Not Evil), what would have to have changed in the data the article is based on? What is it in the data that cannot be Not Evil?