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GOOGLE [ES] BOOZ HAMILTON
Specifically we were talking about Cohen’s speech at Chatham House where he proposed a “digital counterinsurgency,” forcing terror groups like ISIS off the public web.
Pando readers may recognise Cohen’s name from our earlier story about his time at the State Department where, a Wikileaks cable revealed, he had been tasked with convincing Afghan telcos to move their cell towers on to US bases.
Given Cohen's past work implementing US foreign policy, I suggested to my friend that perhaps, just perhaps, we should be more than a little concerned that he now seemed to be proposing that Google should build tools which seek to ban from the public Internet those people who the government has deemed undesirable.
In other words, that Cohen appeared to be proposing that Google turn into a private arm of the US State Department. His comments were followed up by another Google Ideas colleague, Yasmin Green, who suggested that Google might manipulated advertisements to "connect, distract, disrupt, and maybe sell a different product" to Isis supporters.
Green was formerly employed as a “senior consultant” by Booz Allen Hamilton, the US intelligence contractor which formerly employed Edward Snowden.
My friend told me I was being paranoid. And she had a point. Cohen was head of “Google Ideas,” a blue sky think tank with no actual role in creating Google’s policy. There was no suggestion that any of those ideas would become formal Google policy. Also, he was proposing combatting ISIS – hardly a goal unique to the US State Department. Was I seriously suggesting Google shouldn’t try to come up with ideas to help fight terrorism?
Fair. Fair. Fair.
Yesterday, however, Cohen and Google went further than “ideas.” Quite a lot further.
Writing on Medium, Eric Schmidt announced that Google Ideas will henceforth be known as Jigsaw. Cohen will become Jigsaw’s President.