Here's a snip from an interesting article.
what exactly is the Internet...
*snip*
Britannica explains that the foundation was "inspired by advances in science
and technology that occurred as a result of World War II; the NSF was
established by the U.S. Congress in the National Science Foundation Act of 1950." What
the NSF is, in other words, is one of a blizzard of intelligence fronts that
were set up in the immediate aftermath of the forming of the CIA itself in
1947.
Of course, just because the beloved internet was begun as an intelligence
entity and is still administered by a government agency doesn't mean that it
still functions as an intelligence tool. It is worth noting, however, that the
company that was primarily responsible for repackaging the internet into a
civilian entity, America Online, is perhaps the most thinly veiled intelligence
front ever conceived.
This can be easily verified by a visit to AOL's corporate website, where
visitors learn - among other things - that the company is headquartered in Dulles
, http://corp.aol.com/whoweare.html? Virginia. Curious as to where this might
be, I attempted to locate the city of Dulles on a couple of maps, to no
avail. This, I learned, was because Dulles is actually an offshoot of Langley,
Virginia.
Langley is also rather difficult to locate on a map. For the uninitiated,
this is because Langley, Virginia is the home of the Central Intelligence
Agency. In fact, there isn't much else in Langley, Virginia, which exists almost
exclusively to provide residence to the thousands of employees of the CIA's
headquarters.
And it is precisely there that you will find the home of AOL. Apparently
recognizing the negative connotations of a Langley mailing address, the company
essentially created a 'suburb' and named it Dulles. Dulles, by the way, is
named in honor of the notorious Dulles siblings, Allen and John Foster, whose
names were virtually synonymous with the U.S. intelligence infrastructure through
both World Wars and much of the Cold War.
Another fact about AOL that belies its true function is the composition of
its Board of Directors. http://www.corp.aol.com/annual/directors/directors.html
Here you will find such high-level military/intelligence assets as General
Colin Powell and General Alexander Haig. All of which gives a whole new meaning
to that all-seeing eye that comprises the company's logo.
The ways in which we are encouraged to use the internet also belie an
intelligence function. Perhaps the most popular use is for communicating via e-mail,
which is rapidly replacing other modes of communication. Not coincidentally,
e-mail communications are far easier to intercept than are correspondence by
phone or letter, especially given that they are traveling on a network designed
by spooks.
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/cameras.htm