Report: Google, CIA Backing Web Startup

Topics: In The News ,; Tech Talk

Google Ventures and the investment arm of the CIA funded a company that searches out connections between people, groups, and events, according to a report in Wired.

The company, which is called Recorded Future, offers a technology for predictive analysis which lets people to "visualize the future, past, or present."

In-Q-Tel, which develops and invests in technology under the aegis of the CIA and Google Ventures each have seats on Recorded Future's board. Both companies have been "very helpful," providing advice to the Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up, Chief Executive Christopher Ahlberg, an ex-Swedish Army ranger, according to Wired.

The amount of the investments is undisclosed, but the article suggests that it was less than $10 million each and was given in 2009.

This was not the first time Google and the CIA have cooperated on a project. Google sold servers to intelligence agencies and reportedly sought aid from the NSA after it was targeted in attacks said to have originated in China, CNET reports. In-Q-Tel also had provided backing to Keyhole before Google acquired the mapping company to use in its technology in Google Earth.

Wired notes, however, that this may be the first time that the CIA and Google have funded the same startup simultaneously, a happenstance that has the potential to cause some public relations grief for a company that so publicly tries to portray itself as aligned with the good guys.

No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its "don't be evil" mantra. America's spy services have become increasingly interested in mining "open source intelligence" information that's publicly available, but often hidden in the daily avalanche of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports.