No wonder Google blocked Scroogle in 2011 !

[Daniel Brandt]

Silly me, I used to think that Google was liberal!

___________________________

https://www.rt.com/news/562698-ukraine- ... re-google/

13 Sep, 2022

Use of IT is key for Ukrainian military -- ex-Google CEO

Elon Musk's satellite internet and AI-powered analysis of tips from
civilians are key for Kiev, Eric Schmidt said


Western assistance with IT plays a key part in helping Ukraine fight
Russia, Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive, told media after
returning from Kiev.

Schmidt, who has close links to US national security, praised Kiev for
amongst other decisions, swiftly moving government information into
better-protected cloud services. Russia's attack in late February "gave
everybody a political excuse to do the right thing," he said on Monday,
as cited by Agence France Press (AFP).

The tech entrepreneur also praised fellow US billionaire Elon Musk for
sending Starlink equipment to Kiev, ensuring that Ukrainian civilian and
military officials have reliable access to the internet. The SpaceX CEO
is "genuinely a hero here," Schmidt said.

Musk previously repeatedly claimed credit for successfully defeating
alleged Russian cyberattacks aimed at disrupting Starlink access for
Ukrainian users. The ground equipment necessary for getting internet
through Starlink satellites was reportedly contracted by the Pentagon,
though Musk implied that he'd donated it.

Meanwhile the Ukrainian government offered citizens a way to use
smartphone apps to report intelligence data, Schmidt said. The tips are
being analyzed by AI-powered programs to help acquire targets for
Ukrainian military strikes, he said.

US officials previously claimed that the US intelligence service and their
NATO counterparts played a large part in organizing a Ukrainian military
offensive in northeastern Kharkov Region last week. Kiev reported retaking
some 6,000 square kilometers of land from Russia. Moscow acknowledged
pulling troops back for regrouping.

In addition to serving as a top Google executive, Schmidt held top
advisory positions in several bodies linked to the US national security
apparatus. He served as the chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory
Board and the chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial
Intelligence.

He visited Kiev last week and attended the Yalta European Strategy forum
in Kiev, according to photos posted by several top Ukrainian officials,
including Ukraine's Digital Transformation Minister Mikhail Fedorov.

Google faced a rebellion among its own workforce in 2018 over its contract
to develop AI technology for analyzing drone strike footage. Since the
scandal the company is back competing with other giants like Amazon and
Microsoft for defense contracts. Earlier this year Google Cloud CEO Thomas
Kurian announced the creation of a Public Sector division for employees
with security clearances necessary to bid for Pentagon-related work.

END

[ericbarbour]

It's just "good business sense"....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/tech ... gence.html

[ericbarbour]

Also: I've wondered for years if DuckDuckGo, the 'privacy friendly search engine', is good to their word; or if they lied and are saving all the traffic logs because some idiot in DC ordered them to save everything 'or else'. They had to make a "special deal" with Microsoft to use their search results.

I've been using DDG exclusively for several years and it's been "as solid as a commercial search engine should be"; you know, like Google was in its early years. We will probably never know what really happened in the search-engine business.

[wexter]

Duck Duck Go is just an aggregator; ironically one of the sources it aggregates from is Wikipedia.
Nothing is secure; with back-door vulnerabilities and traceability added by design/edict.

Sovereigns, like China, won't let Microsoft sell into their market without providing access to the source code!

I would think that "Iphone" vulnerabilities were put there by design never envisioning that they would be exploited.

Having "one (or two, or a few) vendor(s)" for operating systems, search services, cell phones, credit cards, banks, network infrastructure plays into traceability and information gathering.


It's very likely that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others will continue to become security and defense contractors.


Vulnerabilities get leveraged, and information gets used, as a matter of cost and benefit - there are all sorts of nefarious activities which are tolerated to preserve the integrity of information gathering.

[Daniel Brandt]

Holy crap! Most of the search-engine space in the U.S. has been taken over by intelligence agencies of several pro-U.S. nations!
They were invited in by the CIA, NSA, etc.

https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/01/revea ... microsoft/

No doubt Google was doing it from the beginning. The first task for Google would have been to take down Scroogle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/opin ... andal.html

[ericbarbour]

Holy crap! Most of the search-engine space in the U.S. has been taken over by intelligence agencies of several pro-U.S. nations!
They were invited in by the CIA, NSA, etc.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/01/revea ... microsoft/

Wikipedia does have an article about Unit 8200. And as usual, it was mostly controlled by pro-Israel editors, especially Avaya1. Obviously badly written and editwarred and mostly reads like an advertisment, it says this twice:

According to the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, "Unit 8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and stands on a par with the NSA in everything except scale."[5]

According to Peter Roberts, the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, "Unit 8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and stands on a par with the NSA in everything except scale. They are highly focused on what they look at — certainly more focused than the NSA — and they conduct their operations with a degree of tenacity and passion that you don't experience elsewhere."[7]

Plus there's an article about their "seeekret base" where satellite comms are monitored. Just like the NSA and GCHQ, your tax dollars at waste, doing things that consume massive resoruces and rarely produce useful intelligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urim_SIGINT_Base
Over and over we are told it is near Be'ersheba. Nowhere is it mentioned that Urim is closer to the Gaza Strip frontier than to Be'ersheba. One of the most heavily militarized and surveilled borders on earth.

Also as usual: most of Israel is still blurred out on Google Maps and other commercial sat-photo sites.

This story originally came from MintPress News. What does Wikipedia say about MintPress News?

Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria.[8][9] It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia,[10] and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective.[11] In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.[9]

Described as a conspiratorial website,[12][13] MintPress News publishes disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, according to researchers at Rutgers University and others.[14][15] MintPress News was a major media domain that spread disinformation about the White Helmets, a Syrian volunteer organization.[16] The site has been accused of regularly publishing pro-Russian propaganda.[15] A report from New Knowledge includes MintPress News as part of the "Russian web of disinformation,"[17][18] and the site has published fake authors attributed to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency.[19]