[hardwaresofton]

Despite all the people that think he sounds like a lunatic, is any of what he is saying a lie? Lots of people who sound like lunatics but aren't telling lies are worth listening to, I think.

So, he's putting a lot of "these guys are all evil" spin on it, but then again, all the connections he is making seem to be true. Whether it means Google is in bed with the US government or not is up to the reader (with nudging from him, of course), but I don't anyone confronted with this many factual connections between a CEO of a mega corporation and government actors could simply write this off as "lunacy".

I think most people in the tech industry (and sadly not many people outside it) have already realized the Google is very very big-brothery.

[valas]

How do you define a "lie"?

It is full of misinformation and omission of fact which then creates a false narrative. There are a few options then:

a) Assange is omitting important facts intentionally (which I don't think is the case). In this case you can call this misinformation a "lie".

b) Assange truly believes in the narrative and honestly thinks the important facts are not that important. In this case, well, he is a bit of a lunatic...

Some examples of omission/misinformation:

1. DARPA funding. He omitted that perhaps 30-50% of all PhD students in one or another way get DARPA funding.

2. "$2M contract with NSA in 2003". He omitted that Google was selling it's "Search Appliance" left and right in 2003 and NSA was just a small fish.

3. "Caught redhanded with handing petabytes of data... via PRISM". He forgot to mention that Google was bound by law to comply with NSL and warrants and was one of the first ones among all the companies to push for more transparency.

4. "Google Maps are shopped to Pentagon". He forgot to mention that Google sells access to maps to everyone and Pentagon is just a small fish.

5. When talking about lobbying, he stops explaining why Google lobbies. It doesn't lobby for more contracts, like Lockheed, it lobbies for less regulation in search ;-)

I could go on.

Overall, I would say, the Lockheed-Google analogy is deeply flawed. Just follow the money. Google does not care for government contracts - virtually all of it's revenue is from ads. The key asset for Google is user trust, which as you can see, is very hard to retain. If user trust is lost, Google is toast. Why would it then have any incentive to bed with the government?

Disclosure: I work for Google. I sit next to security folks (not physical security, mind you). Everyone I know here is super super pissed about Keyscore, wiretaps, NSL, etc.

[xnull2guest]

Replying only to your comment about sitting next to security professionals. I am a security professional at another large company. I and my team mates are also all pissed about XKeyScore etc. But it doesn't bubble up all the way through upper management. Because at some point there's section 215 of the Patriot Act, NSLs, and CALEA.

It's the compliance and legal folk who implement key and data escrow. The security folks are mostly not working to defend against nation states - although they will partner with other companies in the field and with the government to share intelligence about ongoing campaigns and fingerprints.

[Argorak]

Omissions are not lies. Yes, it's true that a lot of PhD-Students get DARPA funding, but that doesn't make the fact less true that Google also gets this.

All you are presenting is different interpretations of facts and weighting them differently - which is completely okay and a politics standard.

I disagree with you on one thing: if the main asset of google is trust, how come it aggressively lobbies against german consumer rights and makes themselves a hated target in that country? Doesn't quite fit...

I don't believe that Assange is necessarily _dishonest_. I have different interpretations to a lot of his things, but I am convinced that they are his actual opinions.

[donkeyd]

You are correct that omissions are not lies. However, when you need to make decisions based on information you need all possible information, not half of it. So it's not presenting different interpretations, he's providing context.

If I tell you about somebody wearing a rain coat and using an umbrella on a sunny day, you might conclude that person is a nutcase. If I add the context that this person is highly sensitive to sunlight and is protecting himself, you will probably conclude differently.

Yes, this happens a lot in politics, but that doesn't mean it's ok.

[Argorak]

I could argue that adding the fact that a lot of PhD students receive DARPA funding and trying to mingle it with corporate funding is problematic on the same grounds, as it adds context that I don't feel worthwhile, because it distracts.

The attempt to put all context into all discussions is obviously futile. Adding relevant context is a worthwhile way of debate, but not necessarily part of any particular statement. Assange doesn't see that piece of info as relevant.

Trying to turn this on the person is not a way to go in my opinion. Prove a lie before.

Interacting with his statements (and be it "I think he's overinterpreting and I won't further engage"), is the way to go.

(To add context: I live in Berlin, a person in a rain coat and an umbrella on a sunny day is nothing special.)

[mpyne]

There is a reason that the oath of witness in U.S. court systems requires telling not only the "truth" (i.e. facts or truthful opinions), but "the whole truth" (i.e. all important contextual information/opinions relevant to the question).

The best you can say about Assange building a narrative with carefully-manipulated facts and opinions is that it's manipulative, even if not false.

After all, that's what you guys all say when the NSA does it, is it not? The NSA isn't even this bad, they generally choose to be completely silent instead of feeding manipulative facts.

[aidenn0]

Thor is the Norse god of lightning. Everyone who has been struck by lightning in the past 100 years did not worship Thor. No worshipers of Thor have been struck by lightning in the past 100 years.

Now this isn't very convincing, since you are well aware of the fact that there are few, if any living worshipers of Thor. However, if you weren't aware, it would be a highly deceitful narrative that uses only facts. Omissions with the intent to mislead are just as dishonest as lies.

[Argorak]

This is unhelpful, following this track, no discussion can happen without taking the full context of the universe into account. This might be fun for your 2-sentence statement, when discussing an entity as large as Google in relation to an entity as large as states, I'd be impressed to see you putting all context on the the table before I die.

Also, you cannot put the whole context on the table, as some of this is secret, meaning that you will necessarily omit things.

Which means you have to rely on heuristics. Or trust.

By the way, I follow Thor and I've been struck by a lightning.

Logic != Debate

[aidenn0]

Reading my example it is obvious that the facts I state don't support the position that worshiping Thor prevents lightning strikes; reading a position where someone makes statements of fact that sound ominous without certain context, but are benign in-context, it is reasonable to assume that either:

1) They don't know what they are talking about

2) They are being deceitful

[Argorak]

Or

3) Doesn't merit that piece of context as you do. See my other comment about adding context is an important part of debate, but not necessarily of every individual statement.

[yuhong]

That is a completely different topic, but yes I am glad Vic Gundotra was fired.

[chippy]

Do you have folks in your company with the red ID badges? I think that they are the security vetted employees. These people are working on projects that you, your boss and their bosses do not and cannot know anything about. Are they super pissed also? Are you allowed to ask them?

[wutbrodo]

Wherever you got your information from, they're hilariously wrong. I'm sincerely sorry that they made you look so stupid... red badges are for contractors and vendors, so you see them on the security guards and the bus drivers and the cafe workers. This is public knowledge (at the very least, Gizmodo published a sensationalized article containing this information like.... 3 years ago).

[hardwaresofton]

A little late, but there is no way to submit every piece of available (or even easily-researchable) information in one article. So I think every article would be guilty of lying were that the case.

Also, the facts that you listed are not the facts that really sell his story. It's the connections, not the business Google was doing. Google's a company, I am at peace with the fact that they're selling their products to the highest bidder (the government has a big wallet, filled with money we give it). It's the connections with schmidt, and the other high-ranking Google employees and various parts of gov't.

Also, remember, the only company that seemed to really fight surveillance (I might be getting this wrong, I only really read pretty standard news sources) was Yahoo.

I don't know why everyone is focusing on the DARPA funding... I don't really like it, and I'm worried about the priorities of the research, but that's not so relevant to google.

[caraboga]

DARPA is the wrong agency to follow when it comes to intelligence funding. If you want to look at intelligence funding, DARPA is the wrong source. Check out IARPA instead. http://www.iarpa.gov/ These guys are the public intelligence research arm and researchers report to the Program Manager. Some of the programs are interesting. Some of them are downright... dodgy.

[Natsu]

The biggest problem for me is that it simply doesn't matter if I trust today's Google 100%. The fact is that it's a company and eventually the leaders will die, leave or retire.

Even if I claim that Google [today] is 100% pure, honest and ethical, that trust isn't transferable to Google [tomorrow] that will have all of its resources and all of its databanks to mine someday.

And that's a problem. Rationally we shouldn't let them occupy too high a pedestal or trust them too far, or we run the risk of regretting it later, when it's too late.

[wutbrodo]

I think this is an important point that a lot of people miss. An entity having too much power is a concern separate from what you think they'll do with that power: there are always situations where your current understanding of their "morality" will no longer be valid (i.e. coercion by gov'ts as with the NSA, change in leadership as in your example).

People seem to have an intuitive sense of this but don't have the brains to comprehend it so they land up on "Google has the potential to be evil so therefore they're evil now".

[mkal_tsr]

What I've always found interesting in the nebulus of Assange/Google/NSA/etc. is 90%+ of the time, people only focus on this as it if is only as US-gov issue. As if Russia, India, China and others haven't developed similar systems of surveillance. It's not to say that any system is wrong or right (whole different debate for another time) ... but it just astounds me that people look at what was leaked/released/unclassified and say, "well, look at all the threats to the US, look at what we need to protect. it's for our safety" completely ignoring that other governments and organizations are also developing similar systems. In my mind, it should just be treated as a baseline of possibility/capability.

[hardwaresofton]

But a lot of those other countries are fundamentally different (or at least they are on paper... specifically old constitution paper) than the US.

When the US does it, it's hypocrisy (because of written law, and what we supposedly stand for), when the other countries do it it's not questioned because their citizens don't have the same protection by a long shot.

So while contradictory, I think (partially) that it IS a US-gov issue -- other countries it's a non-starter because they don't have the same rights (or claim the same things).

[mkal_tsr]

True. But then an easy way to clarify my point would be ... when you make a connection with a server, can you verifiably prove your packets haven't been intercepted at any point and recorded by a foreign entity (for sake of this point, China/Russia) or undisclosed corp, given everything known about certain TLA security agencies? And that's kinda what makes things interesting ... that conflict drives innovation on both ends of the spectrum. The next decade is going to be interesting, that's for sure, heh.

[hardwaresofton]

Yeah, pretty sure the answer is no (though it's funny, we wouldn't have any idea how bad it really was, and maybe still don't, without the whole PRISM thing)....

yeah, the next decade is definitely going to be interesting.

[_nedR]

Everybody and their grandmothers know that Russia, India, China are using everything within their means to spy on the world, and their citizens. Its the US hypocrisy of whining about this, while doing as much and more is what gets people.

[chj]

> I think most people in the tech industry (and sadly not many people outside it) have already realized the Google is very very big-brothery.

.. and is politically oriented. For example, the China government hacking incident was blown way out of proportion, greatly damaging the company's business in there. The consequence is still hurting them that Google services are now almost inaccessible in China.

[xnull2guest]

"The company, which in 2010 blamed China for an attack on its computer networks, said it recently discovered the Gmail campaign, which "appears to originate from Jinan, China," and targeted specific individuals." - http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/china-hacks-go...

"Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials." - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chines...

There's a reason PRISM and others go through the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Courts.

China hacked the interface US intelligence agencies were used to request Chinese surveillance targets and information. This is why they've lost business in China.

[michaelochurch]

Some of it's clearly true, even if it's the more prosaic part of it.

The Google founders clearly have links to some evil people. If you attend the neo-Nazi rally[0] in Davos or the Bilderberg Group, you're meeting up with some rotten human beings who have both the power and the desire to do the world harm.

[0] Godwin does not apply because they actually are white supremacists.

I wouldn't accept the whole story uncritically. The thing about conspiracies and "conspiracy theories" is that lower-case-c conspiracies happen all the time. There isn't one Conspiracy to rule them all (that's an adolescent fantasy; if it did exist, you could slaughter them all in the room where they meet, and save the world) and the Bilderberg group doesn't have as much power or importance as is ascribed to it, and just as the various crime families don't identify with any single animal called "the Mafia", there isn't a cohesive "Power Elite" or "Illuminati". Google isn't at the center of The Conspiracy because it doesn't exist. However, people (and especially the sorts of people who tend to acquire power in large organizations) are naturally conspiratorial. When it suits their self-interest, people conspire. Given the company that is now available for the Google founders to keep, and the published fact that, to some extent, they do so, it's obvious based on these links, with the Google founders attending Murdoch's private parties. that Google is going to be involved in some dirty shit. Should it surprise anyone? The Valley is filthy. That's only news to the clueless.

This is, as Assange admits, largely speculation when it comes to motives. However, I think there's more truth in what he's putting forward than 99% of people in tech will want to admit.

[jamesaguilar]

> Godwin does not apply because [the Bilderberg Group] actually are white supremacists.

Basis for this accusation? Can't find anything about it except for from Stormfront and Alex Jones, neither of which count as basis for anything. It is Godwin if you accuse people of being Nazis without evidence, FYI.