I wasn't very surprised to read on the BBC website that Google are up to their old tricks again, pretending to be an 'ethical' business that would never collect data on you without your knowledge or consent.

It seems that for the past 3 years, Google's Street View cars have been scanning for open wireless networks and downloading samples of traffic, such as emails and web pages. They only stopped when the issue came to light during an audit which they were forced to submit to by the German authorities.

What I find most incredible is that Google, with all their technological expertise, expect us to believe that they had no idea that it was going on.

The link provided by the BBC to the relevant page on the Google Blog was broken (the real page is here) but the story resides on a Blogspot subdomain entitled the 'European Public Policy Blog'.

Just who do these people think they are? Well, I can tell you exactly who they are. Just like any company in the United States that reaches even half Google's size, they are an arm of the Government. They have been co-opted, just like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Twitter and many others before them, into a puppet organisation which serves the interests of the U.S. government. They are, in many ways, a C.I.A. front company. And for those of you don't think they exist, simply click here.

Google sit on the Council of Foreign Relations (C.F.R.), a secretive foreign policy think-tank set up in the 1920s by members of the Rockerfeller family, with the stated aim of "improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs." But, sadly, the C.F.R.'s remit is much, much more than this.

Firstly, one has to ask exactly why a firm like Google would need to improve their understanding of U.S. foreign policy if they weren't in charge of disseminating it, or collecting information for it. Just why would any of these firms be relevant to the C.F.R. if they weren't doing their bidding?

The proof is already out there if you're willing to look for it. Reports abound of Twitter's involvement in spreading anti-government propaganda in Iran during and after their presidential elections of 2009, despite there being little or no proof of the numbers of protesters that the U.S. was stating existed.