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Report: Google, CIA fund predictive analytics firm

Google Ventures and CIA's investment arm fund Recorded Future, a start-up that monitors Web and connects dots between people, places, events, Wired says.

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
Elinor Mills
Recorded Future monitors traffic on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, blogs and other sites to help companies connect the dots between people, places and events.
Recorded Future monitors traffic on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, blogs, and other sites to help companies connect the dots between people, places, and events.

Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, have provided funding to a company that monitors all the noise on the Web looking for connections between people, groups, and events, according to Wired.

The company, Recorded Future, offers a Temporal Analytics Engine for predictive analysis, allowing people to "visualize the future, past, or present."

In addition, In-Q-Tel and Google Ventures both have seats on the board Recorded Future and have been "very helpful," providing advice to the Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up, Chief Executive Christopher Ahlberg, an ex-Swedish Army ranger, told Wired in an article this week.

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

This may be the first time Google and the CIA have funded the same firm, but it's not the first time they've worked together. Google has sold servers to intelligence agencies and reportedly sought aid from the NSA after it was targeted in attacks it said originated in China. In-Q-Tel also had provided backing to Keyhole before Google acquired the mapping company to use in its technology in Google Earth.