While Fending Off DoJ Subpoena, Google Continues Longstanding Relationship

[Flabbergasted]

with US Intelligence....

http://www.hstoday.us/Kimery_Report/20060124_While_Fending_Off_DoJ_Subpoena_Google_Continues_Longstanding_Relationship_With_US_Intelligence.cfm

WASHINGTON, DC, JAN. 26, 2006 – While Google, the enormously popular search engine, is refusing a Department of Justice (DoJ) subpoena to turn over its records in a pornography-related investigation, it is continuing to cooperate with US intelligence agencies to provide national and homeland security-related user information from its vast databases, according to sources attending a conference last week of intelligence officials.

Google’s alleged secret relationship with the US intelligence community (IC) was divulged by an IT contractor and confirmed by US intelligence authorities familiar with the matter during the OSS.Net IOP conference near Washington, DC. The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror.

The intelligence sources, also speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, would not say under what authority the IC had obtained Google’s cooperation, or which intelligence agency is involved. One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

Last November, the CIA - through In-Q-Tel (the venture capital firm set up by the CIA to "identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests”) - issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.