The big news on the interwebs a couple of weeks ago centered around this small little attack on Google by some nefarious hackers originating outside of the county. After some digging around, the general consensus is that it came from China, more importantly the Chinese government. Even a few weeks later, the whole Google/China scene is a cluster and actually finding the people responsible has proven to be quite difficult even for someone with pretty extensive resources such as Google.
Google is done fooling around though. They’re hiring the big guns. Under a new agreement still in the final stages of being hammered out, Google will begin enlisting in the NSA to track down the culprits behind the Google attack from mid-January. Right away privacy watch groups will call out Google for shifty practices as giving the government extensive access to the copious amounts of data collected by Google has trouble written all over it.
Initially, I’m pretty optimistic that the right intentions will be sought. Looking further into the future however, I’m more skeptical. We’ve already seen governments excising full control of user data for their own agendas in secrecy in places such as the UK — which just so happens to have one of the most robust cyber security/monitoring networks in the world.
I’m not trying to over-hype this Google-NSA relationship nor am I trying to drum up fear mongering. I’m merely voicing legitimate worries that I assume any normal human would have. But now I’m turning the tables on you. Is finding those responsible for the Google attack, with a rather slim chance of any actual legal recourse, worth sacrificing vast amounts of user data? And will this unholy union lead to further, more serious privacy issues later on down the road?
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