Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets, page 1

Gilman Louie, former chief creative officer at Hasbro Toys, and former chief executive of Spectrum Holobyte, maker of the F-16 and Falcon flight simulator games. Hired by the CIA to found In-Q-Tel.

He's no longer there, In-Q-Tel went through a transition phase and eventually Michael Griffin took the helm. Later, Michael Griffin would go on to be the head of NASA.

Other interesting stuff that In-Q-Tel has been into:

~2003

Furthermore, conference attendance was down from past years and some people cancelled their plans to come. The biggest no-show was Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who was scheduled to deliver a speech Sunday evening. Ellison apparently had trouble starting his private jet and couldn't make the trip from the San Francisco Bay Area. Dyson assured the crowd that Ellison had intended to come, noting his security staff had already arrived.

Passions ran high during many panel discussions, with privacy a frequent point of contention. Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Gilman Louie of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, both argued that the U.S. government's push to use commercial data mining technology to create "watch lists" was particularly troubling.

Data mining systems are designed to help businesses sift through large amounts of information to answer questions such as whether a person should be offered a credit card. The worst that could happen in this case is that a mistake results in a denial of credit. But a wrong conclusion drawn from a government data mining system could deny a person their constitutional rights, Doctorow argued.

Orig Link, may be old

~2004

In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture arm, has invested in roughly 30 companies since it launched in 1999 with the goal of finding and developing technology in the private sector which can also be used in the intelligence community.

Six of those companies -- Attensity, Inxight, Metric Stream, PiXlogic, Stratify and Tacit Knowledge Systems -- are based in the Bay Area (see chart) and focus on knowledge management and data mining.

Orig Link, may be old.

~2005

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency are beginning to invest in start-up companies, following U.S. intelligence agencies in using taxpayer money to spur development of high-technology products and services by U.S. entrepreneurs.

The investments go through a venture-capital firm called In-Q-Tel, established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999 to tap into Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers. In-Q-Tel has invested $130 million alongside private investors, backing more than 80 companies developing technologies such as real-time translation software and digital mapping.

Orig Link, may be old

~2005

Strategic Partnership with In-Q-Tel Plays Key Role in Introducing Cutting-Edge Search Technologies to the U.S. Intelligence Community

[ClickPress, Tue Sep 13 2005] London UK September 13, 2005 - Endeca, the leading provider of Guided Navigation®, Search and Analysis solutions announced today it has signed a deal with In-Q-Tel to introduce Endeca's next-generation enterprise search and navigation technology to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

The deal is the latest with In-Q-Tel, a private, independent, not-for-profit venture group established by the Central Intelligence Agency. The search and navigation solution is part of Endeca's recently announced Government Search and Analysis Solutions.

[edit on 20-10-2009 by RoofMonkey]

U.S. sponsors plan to restrict free speech

A proposal sponsored by the Obama administration at the United Nations that purports to seek protection for "freedom of opinion and expression" actually is a call for a worldwide crackdown on freedom of speech and a mandate for nations to ensure "that relevant national legislation complies with … international human rights obligations" – a clear threat to the First Amendment, according to critics.