Next time you use that iPad or iPhone, give a silent thanks to In-Q-Tel (pronounced “in q tel” or “incutel”), the CIA-run venture capital fund that has been integral in many technologies commonly used today, such as the touch screen. In q tel, also responsible for investing in what was the beginnings of the technology that became Google Earth, began in the late 90s and was born out of the CIA’s need to manage their huge mountain of data.

A Dutch boy who was mugged and robbed last year by a pair of 24-year-old twin robbers just happened to find an image of the moment before the mugging occurred, in the Google Street View on Google Earth.

Forget terrorists using Google maps to find targets; criminals are already way ahead in that game, using Google Earth maps to find their next victims – even stealing the very roofs off buildings that they have found using Google maps!

We’re sure that our readers are well aware that we live at a time of uncertainty, and in a world in which conflict seems to be constant. Scenes of the displacement of innocent civilians, especially women and children, into refugee camps, in Darfur, Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan, are ever-present on the news. It’s extremely heartening, then, to hear about Google and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) jointly making available the Google Earth Outreach project, to raise global awareness of the almost 33 million displaced people that the UNHCR is today helping.