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| Porn Users Forum » Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks |
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| 02-04-10 03:05pm - 5435 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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turboshaft (0)
Active User Posts: 1,958 Registered: Apr 01, '08 |
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks From the Washington Post, February 4, 2010: "Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks." This thread is somewhat related to Wittguy's excellent "Does Google in/out of China Matter?" thread from last month, but it is really a separate issue and a scary one at that. It seems the search engine masterminds at Google have decided to team up with the NSA--as in the U.S. government's National Security Agency--to "help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack" and "to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack." No, this is not a joke as I don't like joking about things that churn my stomach. Google, arguably the best known of Internet search engines, and the NSA, one of the lesser known arms of the Department of Defense, are teaming up to (I really hope) only beef up security. I don't need to rant and foam at the mouth too much but I do have a Gmail account (non-porn, I swear!) and I do use Google constantly for searching so to say I am unconcerned would be a lie. A quote from an author of a book on the NSA sums it up best for me: "I'm a little uncomfortable with Google cooperating this closely with the nation's largest intelligence agency, even if it's strictly for defensive purposes." Gulp. "It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hardcore Commie works." - Gen. Jack D. Rippper, Dr. Stranglove | |
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| 02-04-10 03:47pm - 5435 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I don't remember the details, and I am not really computer knowledgeable, but I seem to remember back in the Bush administration (and probably before that as well) that United States law specifically requires giving the federal government access to telephone lines and Internet connections. There was some concern about the amount of random data that government agencies could download without getting judicial approval (when do you need a warrant to collect emails and other information sent over the internet? Apparently, if you are the federal government, you don't need a warrant as long as you cite the danger of terrorism and the health and welfare of our great nation.) Anyway, the federal government for years has been collecting massive amounts of random information from the internet and storing it away. That's my understanding. Is it legal? Does it matter? Who has the power to go after the federal government when the threat of terrorism is still being exploited? | |
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| 02-05-10 12:28pm - 5434 days | #3 | |
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Wittyguy (0)
Active User  Posts: 1,138 Registered: Feb 04, '08 Location: Left Coast, USA |
This is a difficult topic for several reasons. First, this little development actually causes me to question Google's real motivations more than I did earlier. On one level, their voluntarily giving info the NSA seems like a good idea because an attack against a large web based corporation that permeates the net is really an attack against us all. However, because the Google web attacks originated from overseas I assume the NSA has already been looking into it. Because the NSA (and the CIA) is legally prohibited from spying against people inside the US (however they can spy on calls going in or out of the US and anything else in the world ... every major international telecommunications link coming into the US has an NSA tap situated on it) they don't really have to report what their doing with their data in the public light. The NSA basically reports "in the black", meaning closed door oversight hearings with select members of Congress. Thus, whatever infomation Google turns over could impact private citizens in ways that we may never know. Does turning this info over to the NSA make it easier for them to potentially spy on us Google users in the future? We'll never know. Additionally, my cynical side (OK, almost my entire body) says that Google is doing this in part as free publicity to show that they're "doing the right thing". It also concerns me in that by agreeing to turn this stuff over, it signals that the Chinese hack may have penetrated much deeper than Google publicly let on. That would also be very alarming. Essentially, the public is left reading the tea leaves on this situation and it will probably be years before we ever learn what really happened. Second, my point goes to an amalgam of responses I've given earlier regarding privacy and the web. The US government has no official repository of web communications and cannot legally intercept and store the email and web surfings of people living in the US. However, the standard for getting a terrorism search warrant from the secret judicial panel that grants them to the FBI is pretty darn low thanks to post 9/11 laws. Also, as I noted above, anything that travels outside the US over the web is searchable and saveable by the NSA, CIA and military. To the extent that there are vast archieves of material saved on people is probably true in terms of the web itself and extra territorial communications but to what extent and how heavily the stuff Americans look at is mined for data versus say the Jihadist sites is anyone's guess. Part of the problem, from my undestanding, is that these black bench warrants don't have to be made public, at least not for a while. Thus, if nothing comes up in a search, the subject of that search may never know they were spied on. The current legal framework for handling web affiliated terrorism is still in development and, for most of us, unsatisfactory in it's current form. As I mentioned in the "Free Speech and Porn" thread, the net is only going to become more regulated and controlled by governments as time goes by. The only difference will be the langauge government seek to gain control. You can go the route of Austrailians and the Chinese whereby you claim control by desiring to stamp out child porn and impure thoughts (the "nanny state" model) or you simply take the "national security" angle. The nanny state won't fly to far in the US, especially with first amendment issues, to expect to hear the mantra of national security growing louder over time. Part of this is to be expected because as more industries and government functions become web based, the risk of attack directly impacts more of us. However, to the extent that risk becomes an excuse for large scale spying is where the danger lies. | |
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