Startup and Espionage in the Era of Big Data

The bond between intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley continues to grow stronger.

Ever since Edward Snowden revealed, via British newspaper The Guardian, the way in which American and British agencies secretly collect, in a very organized manner, all the information posted by the millions of users of social networks, search engines and the like, many people have begun to wonder about the extent of cooperation that exists between Silicon Valley and the various intelligence agencies. Following the denials from companies like Google and Facebook, in the vein of “We do not know anything about a program called PRISM,” there emerged cautious admissions and then more affirmations.

Nonetheless, without in any way diminishing the value of the information provided by Snowden, we didn’t need his report to know that very tight bonds exist between Silicon Valley, intelligence agencies and the American government. There’s really a “revolving door” through which employees, capital shares and products come and go.

Everyone has heard of Google Earth. Few, however, know that Google’s magnificent product is derived from a technology that was financed by the CIA over a decade ago. The agency has its own venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, which in 2003 made a strategic investment in Keyhole Inc., a pioneer startup that researched digital mapping via satellites. Keyhole was than acquired in 2004 by Google, laying the groundwork for what would become Google Earth. It’s not a secret: The 007s describe it on their website. Other “successes” of IQT in the sector of technology investment — from 1999 and on — are Decru, a business that developed encryption software and was then bought in 2005 by Network Appliance; A4Vision, a 3-D facial recognition company that closed in 2007; Initiate Systems, specialized in the processing of information, sold in 2010 to IBM; and many others.

Governments, intelligence agencies and technology multinationals even exchange personal information. Google’s former head of external relations, Andrew McLaughlin, was also for a period the chief technology officer — that is, the number two of the White House’s technology division. Max Kelly, Facebook’s former head of technology security — more specifically, the person who was expected to protect the company from computer intrusions — found another very well-paid post when he left Palo Alto. Where? At the National Security Agency.

Google and the CIA are also linked by a startup called Recorded Future, in which they are both investors. The business mission: monitor, probe, and analyze the Internet with the goal of individuating tendencies; in one word, “predict” the future thanks to the immense quantity of data used as raw material. The field of Big Data is of extraordinary interest for entities, such as the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, whose primary goal is that of collecting information. It is incredibly important for companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft, for whom these data often constitute the basis of their business model. It has been the advent of Big Data and advances in storage systems that have allowed them to archive an enormous quantity of information at a low price — as was recounted in a recent New York Times article — in a way that strengthened the bond between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies even more. One of the most recent signs of this is IQT’s announcement of investment in Narrative Science, a business focused on the rapid extraction and highlighting of the most important information in a large quantity of data.

What consequences for the common user could come from the tight alliance between the government, intelligence agencies and the multinationals concerning the tracking of profiles of those who navigate the Internet when those profiles are increasingly more detailed? Should we expect a future similar to the one in “Minority Report,” in which we will be judged not for our acts but rather based on the probability of us committing them?

For Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, director of the Oxford Internet Institute and author of a recent book titled “Big Data,” there exists the following possibility: “Yes, I think that we should be concerned,” he explains to La Stampa. “By using a large number of analyses of the data we can make relatively good predictions about human behavior. But these predictions are probabilistic — they never guarantee certainties. Moreover, they are based on correlations — they don’t tell us anything about causality, about the ‘why,’ but only the ‘what.’ Unfortunately,” continues Mayer-Schönberger, “the human brain is conditioned to see the world as a series of causes and effects, and we are always tempted to interpret the facts in a causal manner. From here there arises the temptation to abuse the analyses of Big Data, to assign people responsibility based on their predicted behaviors and not on their actual behaviors. It is a slippery slope toward collective predetermination and against free will. We have to create safeguards to protect us from this danger, perhaps extending the meaning of ‘justice’ in the era of Big Data.”*

* Editor’s Note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.