Has the NSA stopped being evil, or has Google become evil?
Wired ran an article yesterday on Google and the NSA partnering up to help secure Google's network against the recent cyber attack they were hit with from China. While this sounds good initially (who doesn't want Google's network to be secure?), when you consider that the NSA was the agency that "worked with" AT&T to perform warrantless wiretaps on American citizens it becomes pretty scary.
This is incredibly disappointing. While Google claims that this partnership will not violate their privacy policy, I find this very hard to believe. The NSA isn't really one for caring about privacy policies and Google being willing to jump into bed with the NSA shows an initiative to work with them in the first place, which I don't like.
I'm already scared enough that Google probably knows more about me than I do, but allowing what's probably the biggest techno-spy organization in the world a foot in the door at Google makes me even more worried. I have a semi-hard time trusting a private organization with immense amounts of my personal data, and now knowing that this same company is buddy-buddy with the NSA is disheartening. I have an insane amount of information stored on Google right now. They handle my email, calendar, some health records, my address, credit/debit card information, and probably more.
It's not that I don't trust Google. I do. I think that they honestly do everything they can to protect our data and generally don't want to be evil. This partnership is what I'm worried about. The NSA may help Google secure their network, but at what cost? While they may not demand access to Google's backend systems or to user accounts initially, I think it may become increasingly easy and likely for them to "suggest" that Google do certain things or "request" access to, or information on, things that users would probably not appreciate Google sharing with the government.
Convenience rules so far and I'll continue using Google for now because I absolutely love their services. I've still got that MobileMe subscription active for another 6 months or so, and I wouldn't have a problem jumping ship if Google proves to be untrustworthy with their NSA partnership. The NSA's track record isn't good, and that's enough to tarnish Google's image in my eyes. Hopefully it won't go beyond that. It's taken me a long time to build up this level of trust with Google and I'm not sure that I'm ready to just throw that away yet.
Even if Google doesn't act irresponsibly or outside of the law or in contradiction to their privacy policy, they have lost some respect and trust in my eyes. Big companies partnering with the government is never something that I will support, especially when that company has access to so much of my personal information. When you add the fact that the agency they chose to work with has such a long history of spying on its own citizens the whole thing just seems like a bad situation for us users.
This is incredibly disappointing. While Google claims that this partnership will not violate their privacy policy, I find this very hard to believe. The NSA isn't really one for caring about privacy policies and Google being willing to jump into bed with the NSA shows an initiative to work with them in the first place, which I don't like.
I'm already scared enough that Google probably knows more about me than I do, but allowing what's probably the biggest techno-spy organization in the world a foot in the door at Google makes me even more worried. I have a semi-hard time trusting a private organization with immense amounts of my personal data, and now knowing that this same company is buddy-buddy with the NSA is disheartening. I have an insane amount of information stored on Google right now. They handle my email, calendar, some health records, my address, credit/debit card information, and probably more.
It's not that I don't trust Google. I do. I think that they honestly do everything they can to protect our data and generally don't want to be evil. This partnership is what I'm worried about. The NSA may help Google secure their network, but at what cost? While they may not demand access to Google's backend systems or to user accounts initially, I think it may become increasingly easy and likely for them to "suggest" that Google do certain things or "request" access to, or information on, things that users would probably not appreciate Google sharing with the government.
Convenience rules so far and I'll continue using Google for now because I absolutely love their services. I've still got that MobileMe subscription active for another 6 months or so, and I wouldn't have a problem jumping ship if Google proves to be untrustworthy with their NSA partnership. The NSA's track record isn't good, and that's enough to tarnish Google's image in my eyes. Hopefully it won't go beyond that. It's taken me a long time to build up this level of trust with Google and I'm not sure that I'm ready to just throw that away yet.
Even if Google doesn't act irresponsibly or outside of the law or in contradiction to their privacy policy, they have lost some respect and trust in my eyes. Big companies partnering with the government is never something that I will support, especially when that company has access to so much of my personal information. When you add the fact that the agency they chose to work with has such a long history of spying on its own citizens the whole thing just seems like a bad situation for us users.
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