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Comment by s_q_b | Hacker News Reader

In-Q-Tel is pretty explicit about their mission: to support the development of private sector technologies that are of immediate use (within 36 months) to their IC customers. Their investments are sometimes public and they invest in pretty much what you'd expect: D-Wave, Facebook, Keyhole. Even their name is taken straight out of the James Bond tech supplier branch/agent Q.

Nor do they have even particularly critical national security technology. In-Q-Tel probably has less dark tech knowledge than your average building at NBP.

One of my startups was contacted by one of their employees (it's almost always an employee, not the org directly), and they really just facilitated our data analysis processes, and made some connections. It never got to the stage where we accepted any money, and it was a lot less creepy than some of the government contractors cough Mitre cough.

Disclaimer: I have not, do not, and will not work on mass surveillance technology.

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> Even their name is taken straight out of the James Bond tech supplier branch/agent Q

And here I was convinced it was a mashup of the words "intel" and "incubate"

Nope, it's intentionally a James Bond reference. Never let it be said the CIA doesn't have a sense of humor.

Never let it be said the CIA doesn't have a sense of humor.

If you haven't seen it [0], they began posting on Twitter with this:

We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.

[0] https://twitter.com/cia/status/474971393852182528

>Disclaimer: I have not, do not, and will not work on mass surveillance technology.

I like this. It'd be good if more of us added this disclaimer... to everything we write.

  ...than your average building at NBP.

  ...building at NBP.

  ...NBP.

Name Binding Protocol

National Biosolids Partnership

National Braille Press

National Broadband Plan

Neighborhood Broadcast Problem

Neutral Body Posture

NetBIOS Protocol

Network Binding Protocol

Network Bootstrap Program

Network Bridge Processor

New Black Panthers

Non-invasive Blood Pressure

Normal Blood Pressure

Normal Boiling Point

Northern Business Products

Namco Bandai Partners

Hmmm...

National Business Park

For a minute I thought that was some kind of general name, say for a business park of a certain size or standing within its state, but according to Google (first hit) it's this place:

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/nsa-nbp/nsa-nbp.htm

From my past life in DC, we always just called it "Up North."

And I guess IC stands for Intelligence Community?

Yes, the Federal government loves acronyms, and sometimes I forget these are not commonly known in most of the nation.

Here is a tip when you're faced with an acronym that someone that works the IC throws at you. Just Google it with "CIA" attached. Even though NBP is associated with the NSA there is enough link juice connecting the CIA to basically everything you could possibly associate in intelligence. Another example, "BND CIA" => first result is correct. "ISI CIA" => correct. etc.

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