• 01 Feb 12
  

  Guillermo Santamaria
  • Spy agencies are using Google equipment as the backbone of Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. Rather than hoarding information, spies and analysts are being encouraged to post what they learn on a secure online forum where colleagues can read it and add comments.
• 29 Jul 10
  

  Max Forte

  Google NSA monitoring surveillance national_security Intellipedia CIA

  • Google has lots to do with intelligence

         

       

    Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer

      San Francisco Chronicle  March 30, 2008 04:00 AM  Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.   

    Sunday, March 30, 2008
  • 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.
  • In addition to the intelligence agencies, Google's government customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington, D.C.
  • Spy agencies are using Google equipment as the backbone of Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. Rather than hoarding information, spies and analysts are being encouraged to post what they learn on a secure online forum where colleagues can read it and add comments.
  • The system is modeled after Wikipedia, the public online, group-edited encyclopedia. However, the cloak-and-dagger version is maintained by the director of national intelligence and is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other intelligence agencies and offices.
  • So far, 37,000 users have established accounts on the network, which contain 35,000 articles encompassing 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.
  • Google supplies the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software that allows users to sift through messages and data.
  • Dennehy declined to asses the quality of Google's products, but he applauded the contribution that Intellipedia can make to the government's work. Whether the network actually leads to better intelligence will largely depend on agents sharing some of their most important files and then their colleagues chiming in with incisive commentary - issues that are out of Google's hands.
  • A single deal can be sizable, such as the one Google made with the National Security Agency, which paid more than $2 million for four search appliances plus a support agreement, according to a contract obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
  • The buzz got so loud two years ago that Matt Cutts, who leads Google's fight against spam Web sites, responded by ridiculing the idea in his personal blog.
  • "There were some wild accusations," Bradshaw said. "But everything we do with the government is the same as what we do with our corporate customers."

  10 more annotations...

• 12 May 08
  

  Martin Leyrer

  2blog GoogleFalle

• 01 Apr 08
  

  Andre

  read

• 31 Mar 08
  

  thesuffixed

  conspiracy security

• 30 Mar 08
  

  Grant C

  federal

• 

  Thomas Vander Wal

  The SF Gate has a good article about Intellipedia, a service that is a collection of social web applications that sit securely inside the boundaries of the intelligence community. The tools are shared across all intelligence agencies and information and k

  government intranet enterprise2.0 socialnet socialsoftware socialcomputing intelligence intellipedia privacy security

• 

  Chrys R

  google government

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