Coast Guard visits mysterious 'Google barge'

[RKP5637]

Must be like floating garbage out to sea, all those useless stored emails they capture. LOL

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/30/coast-guard-visits-mysterious-google-barge/3318347/?csp=eMail_DailyBriefing_43101978

Agency mum on trip and San Francisco vessel's purpose, citing "commercial confidentiality."

Google refused to acknowledge any connection to the barge and three others like it
But a Treasure Island worker offered the barest of details
One observer thinks it may have something to do with Google Glass

SAN FRANCISCO — The Coast Guard on Wednesday visited the mysterious "Google barge" floating in San Francisco Bay, but the agency would not reveal anything about the tech giant's hush-hush vessel.

Google has refused to acknowledge any connection to the barge and three others like it. But it is zealously guarding its privacy around the four-story stack of containers docked at a pier on Treasure Island and a companion in Portland, Maine.

At least one Coast Guard employee has been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the company regarding the San Francisco project, Petty Officer 2nd Class Barry Bena told Reuters. An inspector with an unidentified California agency said he, too, had to sign such a document.

Bena told USA TODAY on Wednesday that he was later instructed by superiors to say nothing.

[CoffeeCat]

1. WTF??????

Google "refused to acknowledge any connection to the barge and three others like it." However they are "zealously guarding its privacy around the four-story stack of containers docked at a Pier on Treasure Island and a companion in Portland, Maine."

So Google denies involvement with these barges---which they are now heavily guarding and forcing the Coast Guard and other government officials to sign non-disclosures about it.

Sounds like Google is a willing accomplice with the NSA. They know their company will tank if that news is confirmed.

We need more intel.

[RKP5637]

3. Yep, those were my thoughts too, WTF, when I first started hearing about this. Some have

said they suspect they are some sort of floating data centers. ... it could also be some form of telecommunications relay center.

[Myrina]

6. Read Dan Brown's latest book, Inferno.

One of the main characters is a tech geek who bought an old warship & converted it into an untraceable data center of sorts, doing all manner of hacking, tracking and dirty deeds for people with lots and lots of money under any legal radar because it was a floater.

[onehandle]

2. Careful, Coast Guard. Googlers are armed with highly-powerful, face mounted data magnets.

[RKP5637]

4. ... sucks the data right outta ones brain! - mind-melds AKA Google-melds! n/t

[KoKo]

5. Recommend! This sounds fishy. Coast Guard signs agreement with Google?

Hope this gets further investigation. But, who can do it? Need an "insider whistleblower" to Google Leak.

[DetlefK]

7. It's clearly a research-facility for the next step after GoogleGlass.

If you want your invention kept secret, will you develop it in a normal house?
With windows that can be eavesdropped with a laser-beam?
With electronic appliances that can be hacked into?
With a front-gate where people and supplies and electronics walk in and out all the time?


My guess:
Bionic implants are an upcoming field. There is a bionic eye already on the market which replaces your retina and whose electronics connect to the optic nerve -> the Argus II. Bionic fingers with touch-sensors were successfully implanted to the victim of an accident in France this summer.
My guess is that Google is working on a way to use similar neural interfaces to integrate their technology directly into the human body.

-> You have to wear GoogleGlass in front of your face and use voice-commands spoken aloud. But what if you could control it by THINKING the commands?

[RKP5637]

8. And all reality based, just a matter of time. Will all eventually be cybernetically

linked together, eventually. Probably ...

[NuclearDem]

11. Am I the only one who thought "geth" after reading that?

[Grimslag]

9. It's just business bro, or...greed

Soon as they move this soon to be head office complex, just over 12 nautical miles off US shores, they are in international waters, no more pesky taxes for Google. Here is what drove them to this, a well documented 2004 hissy-fit: Not content with slashing its tax burden by channeling profits through overseas subsidiaries, Google now says it has actually overpaid $83.5m in tax – and it's suing the US Internal Revenue Service to get it back.

Any new federal regulations regarding the limiting of personal data retention, which they know are coming soon, will not effect the floating data storage island nation of Googledum.

Yar! we be data pirates an tax cheats.

[gopiscrap]

10. welcome to DU