Alan Mulally has been a frequent keynote speaker at International CES in Las Vegas. His entre was via the automobile industry which had become very computer oriented. In 2010, he brought Ford employees on stage who were responsible for MyFord, a new in-car communications and entertainment system first installed on the Ford Edge. MyFord is now in version 3.6.

Mulally who became president and CEO of Ford in September 2006, took a seat on Google’s board of directors this month bringing auto industry experience to the search engine giant’s expanding horizon.

Back in January, 2007, Mulally joined with Bill Gates in announcing the Ford/Microsoft Sync partnership at the North American International Auto Show. Sync lets the driver access their mobile phone, digital player or USB drive with voice activated commands. A Nuance Communications enhancement allowed incoming text messages to be spoken by a digitized voice called Samantha using TTS (text-to-speech) technology. The French version known as Julie is actually a Canadian actress, Roxanne Jean. Paulina was the name given to the Spanish version.

Mulally served at Ford until his retirement on June 30. On July 9th, he became a member of Google’s board of directors on the audit committee. As he exited Ford, the company honored Mulally by initiating a scholarship citing his background and expertise in science and engineering. The car company announced: Ford Motor Company Fund will administer $10,000 scholarships annually to 10 outstanding sophomore or junior engineering students working toward degrees in the automotive field at premier partner universities around the world.”

Google hopes to profit from Mulally’s experience in the auto industry as they forge a path into self-driving cars incorporating info and entertainment systems. Ford used Microsoft technology. Google is understandably tethered to an Android approach.

Nissan Leaf autonomous car prototype drove through Japan’s Ogurasan Tunnel

Autonomous features already exist in several models from various car manufacturers. In Japan, Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa accompanied Nissan Vice Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga in an 8.33 mile ride in the prototype Nissan Leaf autonomous car. Google has a way to go from their ubiquitous Google Mapping vehicles with cameras on the roof to “hands free” vehicles like the Leaf. Mulally will have his hands full helping guide them to success.

Google incorporated Titan Aerospace’s drone into their future plans 

Mulally’s background at Boeing also prompted his being courted by Google CEO Larry Page. This spring, Google picked up Titan Aerospace, a solar powered drone manufacturer, which Facebook was also considering.

Whether it is autonomous mapping cars or drones providing a bird’s eye view of the earth, Mulally brings related past experiences to his new position. We can only guess the content of his next keynote speech at CES in January 2015.

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Google has consistently tried to make themselves look like they are forced to cooperate with the NSA and that they aren’t participating in the NSA’s programs to monitor the general population, but Al Jazeera America has obtained documents via the Freedom of Information Act  that show a fairly close level of cooperation between Google and the NSA. Sure, the documents obtained by Al Jazeera don’t show any sort of cooperating ‘smoking gun’ but they do show that the NSA does work fairly closely with Google on National Security measures that might affect the security of Google and ultimately the security of the USA. In the letters, Keith Alexander is communicating with Sergey Brin through Eric Schmidt about meeting up in San Jose at a secure location to be briefed about security threats to Google and the US back in 2012, pre Edward Snowden. And if you read Eric Schmidt’s response to Keith Alexander, he clearly seems to have a very relaxed and familiar relationship with the head of the NSA, Keith Alexander.

He then gets a reply from Brin explaining that it isn’t his primary email but rather to communicate with him at another email address that he actually checks often. He is asking Brin to join an 18 CEO steering group that would help the NSA address security issues more effectively without issue, however the details of the documents themselves are very vague (intentionally) and are clearly designed to make the NSA’s mission to appear to be defensive security-based rather than offensive security based like the PRISM program. That program, Google claims, they had no awareness of, and that the NSA had effectively been doing behind everyone’s backs. So, either the NSA is working with these companies at the same time as working behind their backs, or there’s a level of cooperating that we’re not aware of and that the companies aren’t willing to admit.

For Google’s sake, we really hope its just the NSA being douchebags and not being forthcoming with exactly what they’re doing, which wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Its just that Google’s relationship with the NSA appears to be closer than they’ve led on, and there has been no mention of Google cooperating with the NSA on this ESF (enduring security framework).

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