https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Cohen#Involvement_on_Syr...
>In an email addressed to the deputy Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton dated on July 25, 2012, Cohen revealed that Google Ideas was working on a project, together with Al Jazeera, to track defectors of the Syrian Army with the explicit goal of "encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition."
That is pretty frightening.
I started from Assange's scathing review and decided I had to read the thing for myself. From an inside view, it's just terrible futurism (who wants to read the news on a transparent screen facing a window?), but from an outside view it's a fascinating position paper from Schmidt/Cohen.
I'm usually unimpressed with the "tech companies are all government conspirators!" paranoia, but I do have the sense that Google has chosen a way more active role in international politics than others.
I don't want to veer into conspiracy territory here - I absolutely think DDoS protection is a great project, and we need it no matter who it's being provided for.
But reading The New Digital Age was a creepy experience that made me stop equating Google's political standing with that of Apple or other US tech companies. It was very openly a love letter to state power in a way I haven't seen even from topical companies like Palantir.