‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google | Hacker News Reader

‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google

wired.com

41 pointsbrg25 comments

"The telegram companies and the old-school telcos were virtually monopolies; customers had nowhere to turn, if they wanted private communications. Bing and Yahoo Mail are just a click away."

The idea that bing and yahoo mail aren't consuming your personal data in order to show you more ads, or wouldn't cooperate with the government if asked, I find to be laughable.

http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/yahoo-spy.pdf

True. On the other hand, with things like i2p, encrypted connections between private servers, and the ubiquity of cheap hosting services, individuals do have the option of easily establishing their own secure communication channels.

I doubt it will erode Google's market share or traffic much (or at all), but only because the average computer user is neither informed nor interested in privacy and security.

But it's still not a good idea to over-centralize the internet in principle. My own Google usage has fallen off a lot lately just for the sake of not relying on a single service for too much.

"I doubt it will erode Google's market share or traffic much (or at all), but only because the average computer user is neither informed nor interested in privacy and security."

AT&T's behavior seems to have had no effect on iPhone enthusiasm. When I've asked people about having to use AT&T to use their iPhone, it seems a total non-issue. They simply don't care if a company was engaged in illegal spying, they want what they want.

It reminded me of when there was much more railing against software patent, and Amazon grabbed on for one-click shopping. There was some noise, but Amazon's cheaper prices soon won the day.

The Dead Kennedy's had it right: Give me convenience or give me death.

Google is a massive company. By some reports 10% of 'internet traffic' flows over its private links. It has an army of smart engineers who know internet technology inside out and develop new systems at various layers on a regular basis.

Why do they need the NSA to help them against attacks, exactly?

You may be underestimating the NSA's resources.

Agreed. The NSA employs the most Math PHDs of any organization in the world, as well as a lot of CS PHDs. They also have a huge budget and some of the most powerful computer clusters in the world. Further, they almost certainly know more about China's cyber-warfare capabilities than anyone outside the Chinese government.

Let's not forget that this is also the NSA's area of expertise. Making awesome search engines and ad services are very different practices than conducting cyber warfare. Not only that, they have access all the most important players in a way that no company ever could.

I probably am underestimating their resources, but I'd still like an answer that'll allow me to vaguely quantify those resources and how they'll be put to use battling the evil fiends Google seems to be having trouble fending off.

And while we're on the subject, will other non-government companies faced with online attacks also have access to NSA resources? And if not, why not? Where's the line here and what are the implications?

The approximate budget for the intelligence community (the collection of sixteen agencies dealing with intelligence as part of the federal budget) is something in the neighborhood of $75 billion. Signals intelligence gets over 90% of that budget. The NSA is the largest of the signals intelligence agencies (the other ones being the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency).

So let's assume that the NSA gets the lion's share of nearly $70 billion, say $30-35 billion, as its annual operating budget. It also gets access to things money can't buy: classified technologies, crytographic techniques, secret knowledge of physical infrastructures, etc.

Google, on the other hand, has no (or extremely limited) access to state secrets (either those of the U.S. or of foreign countries), and it has an annual income of about $6.5 billion--one fifth that of the NSA.

The NSA doesn't utterly dwarf Google, but on the other hand they have some substantial advantages that Google simply cannot match.

It may significantly help others from being attacked--the NSA has the advantage of being able to connect the dots in a way that no single company can (no matter how large). They know how other attacks in the past have worked, who else is getting attacked, etc etc.

If this were merely about technical assistance, you wouldn't have a press release about it.

I read this as a warning to China that the US has taken a Defense Interest in Google (and implicit interest in the other companies affected in the recent attacks). And that further 'incidents' may trigger a National Response. There's simply no other reason to announce the partnership.

I think the main take-away is that this will be a PR hit to Google, especially internationally.

No matter how strong the firewall Google puts up between surveillance and intrusion diagnostics, there will be people questioning it.

When you are a public company there is just one thing that count: REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE!

You can say whatever to your community... But if you are public you need to increase your revenue and enter in every market that can satisfy this need for the investors. "Don't be evil" and things like that are BS, if you are not evil into the markets, someone will take yours.

The TL;DR version of Google's IPO terms were "Investors can be our bitches and like it." They are not nearly as much under the gun as most public companies in this respect.

While the rest of the article is certainly true, the Russian press talks about a lot crazy things, like the "scandal" mysterious suicide of the woman who filed a rape lawsuit agains Bush: http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/11257_scandal.html

And the Iraq war is over: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/29-01-2010/111925-wa...

On the Iraq war being over, I would have doubted it before yesterday when I started reading George Friedman's new book, The Next 100 Years. He would be the first to say that his predictions at a granular level are often wrong but that his methodology is a decent way of understanding how the world works and what might happen next.

Anyway, he states that the current war in Iraq (and perhaps Afghanistan) (against the "Islamist Jihadists" as he calls them, revealing more about his politics than is necessary) is not going to be a priority for the next 10-20 years. The primary purpose was to destabilize the region, not win the "war on terror", which certainly seems to have worked.

The next conflict, as he sees it, will be with Russia as it once again tries to gain greater access to the Atlantic, becoming another global power with access to both oceans.

I'm not well-informed enough to do more than repeat what I've read so far, but it is a thought-provoking thesis. And recommended reading.

Anyone that has an upper hand in a market is going to draw the govt's interest, but it is a two-way avenue, since I am sure that google would benefit from such a relationship.

This has made me re-think having google host all my email.

Also, I just logged into HN with my google account.

Suddenly Google's action in China and Hillary's speech to the Chinese all make sense.

This isn't a Google problem, this is a gov't problem.

This is an internet problem. Which government should be dealing with this?

This is why I avoid Google products and block google domains in my HOSTS file.

I really doubt you have blocked all Google domains. They own tens of thousands, probably much more.

Also, Google provides public services by hosting assets such as Javascript libraries - are you blocking those as well?

If you don't want Google to track you you should just not visit Google domains, block Google analytics (and other trackers) and inspect your cookie cache every now and again to see what's leaking. That should suffice for a non-obsessive level of Google paranoia.

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