Google's Next Victim? British Intelligence Services
from the killing-industries-before-killing-industries-was-cool dept
Google is at it again. Not content to singlehandedly destroy the motion picture, music, news and road map industries, Google's all-seeing eye, combined with its search engine, is now threatening the livelihoods of British intelligence agents, who will now be expected to tell their superiors "something they don't already know."According to Sir David Pepper, former director of the UK Goverment Communications Headquarter, the "Google effect" of having so much information available online has "substantially raised the threshold for producing intelligence for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ."
"Nobody wants the easy stuff anymore and there is no point spending effort and money collecting it," said Sir David, who was giving the annual Mountbatten Memorial Lecture at the Institution of Engineering and Technology.Now, not only is it going to be tougher for spies to outspy Google, but results will now be expected to compete with Google's famous fractions of a second.
"Many of the sort of things for which [officials] once would have turned to the intelligence agencies are now readily available to them online," he said.
"Thanks to Google Maps and Streeview anyone can today see photographic detail of far away countries which hitherto would have been available only through secret and highly sophisticated national satellites.
"Intelligence producers have had to become very sensitive to this phenomenon and very careful not to put effort into producing intelligence that purports to be secret which is in fact not secret at all."
Sir David Pepper also said "the Google effect" meant that officials who use secret intelligence were demanding it quicker than ever before.It's not all bad news, however. The "Google effect" can also be used for good, rather than just as a tool to put industries out of business.
"If the intelligence readers are used to getting information online very fast they're going to expect the intelligence agencies to be able to do much the same thing," he said.
But online information was offering opportunities as well as challenges to those in the espionage trade, Sir David said. "You can find out a lot about potential spies without ever meeting them, simply by looking at their online footprints,"* he said.*(Henceforth referred to as the "Facebook effect.")
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Filed Under: google, intelligence, search, uk
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He does sound silly though.
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Oh, really?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16067383
That led to 14 private photos of Mr. Zuckberg to be posted online by others calling attention to the issue.
But what interests me on the story is that the code was pushed to make it easier to denounce somebody and it shows what happens when you try to automate such things, people loose their privacy.
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The good ol days...
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I think he's just commenting on the way things are changing. Pointing out how much easier it is to get the basic information then previously. I wouldn't call it silly as such.
Of course it does raise the question of why we have so many Spooks at GCHQ if so many of them are largely redundant due to improvements of technology.
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Anyone else...
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To be fair...
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If Google can find it...
Those tags should be pretty much used anytime I want to keep state secrets.
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Re: The good ol days...
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Re: If Google can find it...
meta name="robots" content="noindex"
meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"
Also I previewed it this time to make sure it works.
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Re: Anyone else...
I need to get up earlier.
CBMHB
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Turns out the British Intelligence Service knew it was Google all along.
No wonder LOLcats are so ubiquitous on Google
;)
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Re: Anyone else...
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Actually, I would've thought that thanks to Google Maps and Streeview anyone can today see photographic detail of far away countries which hitherto would have been available only if you could afford a plane ticket and a digital camera.
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Re: Anyone else...
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