Wow, Google sounds pretty cool inside! Sure, Google makes a lot of money, but the tech execs aren't focused on that and it's a data-driven business. I have no idea how impressive Google really is inside, but every time I hear about it, Google sounds so darn impressive!
And then I recall about Prism. And I think about how a secret program like that costs money and significant technical involvement from the host to run. Google took public money to help run Prism, and Google techs actively supported the dragnet. Pretty shameful, IMO.
As an ex-Googler who apparently can speak out, I ask you: if Google has competitors that are privacy focused, isn't it in everyone's best interest to select the competitors' products over Google's despite Google's excellence? And, can you report if anything has been done at Google to lift this stink of surveillance from its products?
Is Google still a willing participant in Prism-style data collection of its users?
So, when the news about Prism [1] broke, people inside Google were really, really baffled, because nobody had ever heard of it. We eventually came to the conclusion that Prism must be the NSA code word for FISA court orders [2], which is a lawfully mandated procedure where a court requires that an Internet company turn over records of a specific user under court order. From the outside, it's a big story; from the inside, it's one of those boring legal restrictions that we need policies in place to deal with.
Then the news about MUSCULAR [3] broke, and people were very, very pissed [4]. I saw the internal reports where people put together what must have happened; I'm not sure what sort of details I'm allowed to say, but it basically amounted to the U.S. (well, technically the UK, acting on behalf of the NSA) conducting military operations against the property of its own citizens. Google ended up encrypting all inter-datacenter traffic soon after. [5]
Thank you for the classy response. Every time I think about this surveillance state situation we find ourselves in, I have trouble staying civil.
This news item you reminded me of - "Google ended up encrypting all inter-datacenter traffic soon after" - makes sense as a response that the government can't argue with (yet).
Looking over the MUSCULAR wikipedia article, I wonder if the NSA could still capture the user's and enterprise's unencrypted data at the Google Front End Servers like they had been before the inter-datacenter traffic was encrypted?
It would be a fairly safe assumption that anything that hits the United States at a minimum has traffic analysis done on it. Most google services now use HTTPS at the front end.
And then I recall about Prism. And I think about how a secret program like that costs money and significant technical involvement from the host to run. Google took public money to help run Prism, and Google techs actively supported the dragnet. Pretty shameful, IMO.
As an ex-Googler who apparently can speak out, I ask you: if Google has competitors that are privacy focused, isn't it in everyone's best interest to select the competitors' products over Google's despite Google's excellence? And, can you report if anything has been done at Google to lift this stink of surveillance from its products?
Is Google still a willing participant in Prism-style data collection of its users?