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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Through In-Q-Tel, the CIA invested in a LOT of companies who were aiming to solve the problems they had. Google was another very early investment by In-Q-Tel on behalf of the NSA because Google's stated goal -- to collect, organize, and make sense of all of the world's data -- overlaps with what the NSA's goal is (and it's possible that Google might come up with better ideas and tech for doing it than the NSA's brain trust).

If these agencies were NOT investing in potential technical solutions that would be a cause for concern.

Read more about In-Q-Tel and their investments here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

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Note the "problems they had" aren't necessarily "they needed a better database technology". Oracle's mission is to have all bits of data in the world processed or stored on an Oracle system (source: I worked for Oracle, this was the internal mission statement).

Oracle collects:

1. Who is staying in which hotels and in which rooms

2. Who is eating at which restaurants and going to which entertainment facilities

3. Who is getting what health services

4. Who is travelling where across travel industry

5. Who is working for which companies in what roles and how much are they paid

This is incredibly powerful intelligence the CIA could not NOT want. Replace "who" in any of the above with a politician in a country of interest, or other person of interest/intelligence target.

<strike> It's sort of like Facebook getting CIA funding. CIA definitely has interest to know intimate details of everyone's lives, who is sharing what information with who, and how social fabric in different countries are organized. They/we would be crazy not to. Taking the converse: The CIA wasn't funding Facebook because they really needed to socialize more with friends and family. </strike> Please see thread below. CIA investment in Facebook has not been established.

Do you have a link to details about the CIA funding FB? I heard that as a rumor but thought it was debunked

Honestly I had not fact checked this. A quick internet search found lots of articles making different claims (CBS News says yes, Reddit says yes, IQT website does not list, Quora says no.) Overall there doesn't appear to be a very strong argument and this Quora article (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-substance-of-the-claim-tha...) makes a compelling case that the connection is too tenuous.

I will remove from parent content.

Are you suggesting the CIA has ways to exfiltrate data from Oracle databases assisted by Oracle but without knowledge or consent of the user? That would be a pretty big deal.

If not, what are you saying?

Have you ever looked at the history of Oracle security flaws, as well as their reluctance to improve it? A public resource for this is David Litchfield.

Not OP. Just saying:

[X] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

Why would you need data to be in a specific brand of database before you can send legal process for it?

You wouldn't. It just simplifies 'things', from a technical and operational POV.

In what way does it simplify 'things'?

No actually, the problems they had are just that the US intelligence community needed relational databases. Keep in mind that this preceded the internet and online hotel bookings.

That is a pretty far cry from Oracle having the data, especially pre-cloud. I think you are conflating "an Oracle system" with a system that Oracle actually controls rather than and end user that using the software. This is like saying a hard drive manufacturer has all the data that are on their hard drives.

Your data is in a piece of software controlled by Oracle. They can easily create a backdoor designed for NSA use. Whether they "have" your data on their hardware or not doesn't make much of a difference in this case.

Maybe don't connect your database to the internet? Which is the normal way to install it locally?

There was a time when Oracle sort of worked that way. On-prem Oracle has mostly migrated to an appliance type model where phone-home is standard and almost mandatory. "Exadata".

If you connect it to any network at all. Is it beyond the NSA to string together several obscure vulnerabilities to attack a specific target? [1]

I mean.. I suppose you could air gap your database, but of what utility is it to you now?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

I think 'createdapril24 is referring to Oracle's broader data brokerage/marketplace business rather than strictly their on-premise database system business.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/22/oracle-us-privacy-class-ac...

Not just investment. "Highlands Forum", DLI (NSF, NASA and DARPA), MDDS. Sergey Brin was literally funded by NSA and CIA under MDDS. Google was the result of his research under this grant.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

From the above link, In-Q-Tel was involved in Keyhole, which was acquired by Google. Can you show a source that In-Q-Tel directly invested in Google earlier?

> In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[10] The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth.[11]

Interesting. "Key Hole" is the code name for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite. [0] I never made the connection between the names.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN

IIRC Google began with a DARPA grant but they were not directly funded by In-Q-Tel. However, In-Q-Tel invested in a different company that Google acquired which was the basis for Google Earth and through that acquisition In-Q-Tel gained shares in Google.

But some of their products were. Google Earth was an acquisition, Keyhole Inc, and one of their early investors was In-Q-Tel.

You imply a lot, but apparently the investment to Google, according to wikipedia is because Google bought a company they invested (Keyhole, later become Google earth) and apparently they sold the stocks after the acquisition. Or do you have more info?

The US military spends a lot of its treasure managing data, so it's not surprising that they would fund database companies to do it better. I got my start in databases while serving in the US Air Force in the early 1980s. Oracle would have been quite interesting for us, had we known about it.

It's not much different from how military funding drove advancement of aircraft or integrated circuits.

Such investment should never be in the hands of unaccountable, black box organizations.

How would you stop it? Prohibit opaque block box organizations from spending money?

Good luck with that, especially since they’re opaque and black box and all.

This is both a a very US-centric and trust in authority figures take.

For the rest of the world however, and people who understand that power should have limits, and that a distrust in authority figures should be the default state the idea that companies like Oracle and Google are mere extensions of the CIA/NSA is terrifying.

Who said anything about trusting In-Q-Tel, the companies they invest in (ahem, GOOGLE!), or what the agencies are doing with the fruits of their investment? I personally think the CIA should be abolished and the NSA put on a very short leash with lots of oversight. But in terms of doing what they do wisely it cannot be argued that In-Q-Tel gives numerous US Government entities access to IP and tech they otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

You keep saying InQ-Tel invested in Google but apparently it is Bullshit (look at the answers above). How about sticking to truth instead of conspiracy theories?

Same for investments by Chinese intelligence agencies. Right?

We tend to treat our rivals differently from ourselves. So no.

To the vast majority of the world, including large part of the West, USA is more hostile than China. So, who is “you”?

HN is a US-based service.

By the way, how is China coping with the vast flood of immigrants trying to move there? Oh, that's right -- there aren't any.

Doesn’t matter where HN is, what matters is where the community lives. And large part lives outside US.

On immigration to China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China.

How’s judiciary in US? Still imprisoning millions of random people for being poor and using them as slave labour?

Your reference is mainly about Chinese nationals returning. 300,000 refugees and 200,000 Africans. Out of over 1 billion.

As for "millions of random people for being poor" I think you'll find they were imprisoned for committing crimes, and imprisoned after a jury trial or a plea bargain.

As opposed to, I don't know, publishing a newspaper in Hong Kong. Or being Uyghur.

No, they are largely imprisoned for literally nothing, or because of irrelevant formalities: https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1562849803297366017. Or https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1556292658615750656. Or sometimes just executed: https://twitter.com/phil_lewis_/status/1562837493648871430.

It does show a bias that at this point should be obvious even to you: you are conditioned to believe US prison victims - I’m guessing including those forced into slavery - deserve it, and to believe those imprisoned for all kinds of felonies in China don’t.

What garbage. "Obvious even to you" should be that poor people commit more crimes against other people and against property, the very thing that police are looking for. That's why more of them are locked up.

Just for due diligence, I looked at your "references":

1) the first two are from the same person, and are unattributed. So I kind of doubt they're even true.

But let's pretend they are: "irrelevant formality" -- going to your probation appointment is pretty important. It's not "nothing." Probation is what they gave you instead of prison. I thought you were in favor of keeping people out of prison.

"Dirty urine" probably means they were using drugs. They were let out of prison on the promise that they'd stay off drugs. You think people should use drugs after pledging not to?

2) your third one: One extremely biased side of a case which I assume has other sides, from an extremely biased source. Try to do better.

as for the "felonious" people in China: what did the Uyghurs do to deserve it?

If you talk to almost any defense attorney (as I've done), they'll freely admit that the vast majority of their clients are guilty.

There are stats there, anyone who’s not indoctrinated can see them. One point:

>as for the "felonious" people in China: what did the Uyghurs do to deserve it?

Terrorism. The difference between Uighurs and the victims of American invasion on Middle East is that Chinese aren’t mass executing them from safe distance like Americans do.

I'm done arguing. Go ahead and have the last word if that's important to you.

Could you please specify to which part of "the West" is US more hostile than China? Being in/from EU, I think mostly everyone - going by recent public polls - is very happy about our partnership with the US given recent events, and a lot of people are already talking about the Chinese threat too. People here hoped China would take a pro-Ukrainian stance (with the TV presenter dressed in UA colors one time, etc), but that didn't materialize and instead China seems to be cooperating with Russia and people here dislike that a lot.

I haven't seen any serious claims (except from the remains of the pro-Putin nutcases, and the amount of these went to like 1/10000 the state before the war) about US hostility for a very long time - most people here think that giving up Afghanistan was a huge mistake. Most of my friends who didn't like the US acting as world police have said they were mistaken.

Lots of people in EU, not to mention worlds two main technology hubs: China and India. Yes, US is the good guys this time, let’s hope it stays like this, but we can’t forget Middle East, same way we can’t forget Trump and resulting deterioration of human rights.

China did take anti-Russian stance. Their strategic investments were redirected to other countries. They are complying with embargoes, differently from Germany (https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1563534129534500874 for a somewhat related story) and some other western countries. Of course you won’t find it mentioned in mainstream western media.

Invading Afghanistan was a mistake, but most of all it was a crime against humanity. And the worldview that got US into that - same as worldview of Putin, essentially the belief that their country has god-given right to invade others - is still there. There are more similarities, like protecting their war criminals from justice. Or ideologically-motivated oppression: https://twitter.com/erininthemorn/status/1563223736681381888.

China or India are not "the West".

My local mainstream media is reporting about Germany correctly and in full, btw. But yeah, we like to shit on Germans, other nations might not be alike in that.

> but we can’t forget Middle East, same way we can’t forget Trump and resulting deterioration of human rights.

Agreed.

> same as worldview of Putin, essentially the belief that their country has god-given right to invade others

Crimes against humanity are happening in Afghanistan now in much greater number than when the US Army was there.

I think that coming to resolve problems such as were/are in Afghanistan is the correct thing to do (not saying the practice worked out perfectly and that there weren't problems). That's absolutely incomparable to Putin who's there to take children, gas/oil fields and access to Black Sea, not to help.

You can really claim with a straight face that invading Afghanistan and killing two hundred thousand random people was to help?

Because, well, that’s exactly what Rashists say about invading Ukraine. Once again: same mentality.

#whataboutism

"invading Afghanistan and killing two hundred thousand random people"

there's that word "random" again. You disqualify yourself from any serious discussions when you keep using that. You're throwing around crazy numbers like someone on The View.

>there's that word "random" again.

So you are saying all those droned kids were combatants, not random victims?

>You're throwing around crazy numbers like someone on The View.

Those are official statistics, you’ll find them quoted on Wikipedia. Let me guess: they look weird to you, because your media only reports loses on the invading side.

What Russians/Putin said doesn't really matter to me, there are no (significant amount of) fascists in Ukraine and no persecution of Russians was happening. Meanwhile, Taliban is very much real and their crimes against humanity are real too.

Taliban was just an excuse, some as “Ukrainian Nazis” are to Rashists. If US really wanted to hunt terrorists, they would invade Saudi Arabia instead.

Also - you really believe those two hundred thousand people killed, as “US aid to Afghanistan”, were Taliban?

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If there were no CIA agents inside Google that would be a cause for concern.

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If the CIA did not control Google that would be a cause for concern.

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Well, I'm concerned.

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