"The Google Code": Powering the U.S. Spook World

I wonder if anyone in the CIA Google'd the Treadstone Project? Where is Robert Ludlum when we need him!

With the increasing intensity of global USA and British electronic and satellite surveillance of al Qaeda, the leadership of the global terrorist groups have gone "dark," an unintended consequence of successful surveillance by NSA and other intelligence sources -many using sophisticated keyword analysis of the daily global electronic communications traffic. To make the spooks job even more difficult, most of the top terrorists have switched from using satellite phones and email to employing centuries-old hand-delivered messenger networks, cutouts at Internet cafes, and a vast network of honey stores that have existed throughout the Islamic world since biblical times to generate income and secretly move weapons, drugs, and agents.

When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to possible atomic-plant locations in Iran, they turned to the 800 lb gorilla in the technology industry to supply servers for searching documents: Google Inc. The agencies use the devices to create their own mini-Googles on intranets made up entirely of government data as well as licensing a turbo-powered version of its aerial mapping service, Google Earth to plot scientific data and chart potential enemy coastlines, for example.

The CIA and NSA and other 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.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge," said Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA. "They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we're encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

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.

Agents can log in, depending on their clearance, to Intellipedia's three tiers of service: top secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified. So far, 37,000 users have established accounts on the network, which contain 35,000 articles encompassing 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.

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.

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.

Google has been the target of conspiracy theories on the blogosphere, claiming that the company  is working with spy agencies more closely than simply selling search equipment.

Calling Jason Borne!

Posted by Casey Kazan.

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Source Link:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/29/BUQLUAP8L.DTL

Comments

[Ian Kemmish]

If you want a conspiracy theory, just consider what budget cuts the US intelligence community will face after bin Laden is caught or killed. They probably want him to stop being a useful bogeyman "out there somewhere" even less than the White House does.

Conversely, al Zawahiri probably has excellent reasons for wanting bin Laden to become a dead martyr who can't voice an opinion that differs from his or forces him to share the credit.

If bin Laden is indeed in hiding, but I'd wager good money it's not the CIA he's hiding from!