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Google links with US spy agency
By Zhang Xiaojun |
February 27, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
INTERNET search firm Google's deal that invites the US National Security Agency (NSA) to help with its inquiry into cyber attacks may pose serious threats to other countries' national and commercial security and is worrisome to world Netizens.
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, has become the largest world Internet search engine. It runs more than 1 million servers in data centers around the world, and processes more than 1 billion search requests and 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day.
If we compare Google to a globalized information processing machine, then its collaboration with the NSA would allow its products to flow in vast volume to the spy agency and greatly boost the agency's information collection capabilities.
Hiroyuki Miyawaki, senior consultant at the Japan Research Institute, told Xinhua that intelligence agencies' independent information collecting capacity is usually limited, but joining hands with Google would significantly improve its capacity. That would be manifested not only in the wide range of information but also in the usage of Google's history information, which is counted in large quantities.
In comments on the deal, French magazine L'Expansion said many people have doubts about this kind of collaboration. American magazine Wired wrote a headline like this: 'Don't Be Evil' Meets 'Spy on Everyone': How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google.
"Don't be evil" is Google's unofficial slogan coined by the company's engineer Paul Buchheit.
World experts were also worried about the deal between Google and the NSA.
A researcher at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China told Xinhua that if Google, which holds a sea of information, and the NSA, which is strong in intelligence analysis, work together fully, other countries will face severe potential threats.
In addition, Google remembers not only its users' registration information but also their search and browsing records. That is to say, intelligence agencies such as the NSA can easily get to know who is interested in what if they attain the relevant information and find out the IP address of the user.
During the Cold War, the NSA worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams. During the war on terror years, the NSA teamed up with the telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on customers' phone calls and Internet traffic right from the telcoms' switching stations.
Michel Riguidel, head of the Department of Computer Science and Networks at Telecom Paris Tech in Paris, said that European companies like Airbus and Total could become targets of the Google-NSA collaboration because collaborations between intelligence agencies and information technology companies in the past mainly focused on commercial or national domestic security areas.
Riguidel suggested that Europe work out corresponding policies for the information industry to break up the monopoly dominated by Google and other US Internet search technologies corporations.
Google is keeping quiet concerning the controversial deal. In a reply to Xinhua on its inquiry into hackers who breached the company's cyber security defenses last year, an official in charge of public relations in Google China said: "As we have said before, we are not commenting on our investigation."
To dispel doubts from the outside, Google has emphasized that its cooperation with the NSA will not leak user information.
But French information technology Website Generation Nouvelles Technologies commented that Google's promise can hardly convince others, especially when people are facing agencies like the NSA, which is notorious for intercepting e-mail and enjoys judicial right of exemption.
Observers believe Google is likely to be the first and foremost victim of the cooperation with the NSA because Internet users will express their disgust by their clicks.
(The author is a Xinhua writer.)
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, has become the largest world Internet search engine. It runs more than 1 million servers in data centers around the world, and processes more than 1 billion search requests and 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day.
If we compare Google to a globalized information processing machine, then its collaboration with the NSA would allow its products to flow in vast volume to the spy agency and greatly boost the agency's information collection capabilities.
Hiroyuki Miyawaki, senior consultant at the Japan Research Institute, told Xinhua that intelligence agencies' independent information collecting capacity is usually limited, but joining hands with Google would significantly improve its capacity. That would be manifested not only in the wide range of information but also in the usage of Google's history information, which is counted in large quantities.
In comments on the deal, French magazine L'Expansion said many people have doubts about this kind of collaboration. American magazine Wired wrote a headline like this: 'Don't Be Evil' Meets 'Spy on Everyone': How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google.
"Don't be evil" is Google's unofficial slogan coined by the company's engineer Paul Buchheit.
World experts were also worried about the deal between Google and the NSA.
A researcher at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China told Xinhua that if Google, which holds a sea of information, and the NSA, which is strong in intelligence analysis, work together fully, other countries will face severe potential threats.
In addition, Google remembers not only its users' registration information but also their search and browsing records. That is to say, intelligence agencies such as the NSA can easily get to know who is interested in what if they attain the relevant information and find out the IP address of the user.
During the Cold War, the NSA worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams. During the war on terror years, the NSA teamed up with the telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on customers' phone calls and Internet traffic right from the telcoms' switching stations.
Michel Riguidel, head of the Department of Computer Science and Networks at Telecom Paris Tech in Paris, said that European companies like Airbus and Total could become targets of the Google-NSA collaboration because collaborations between intelligence agencies and information technology companies in the past mainly focused on commercial or national domestic security areas.
Riguidel suggested that Europe work out corresponding policies for the information industry to break up the monopoly dominated by Google and other US Internet search technologies corporations.
Google is keeping quiet concerning the controversial deal. In a reply to Xinhua on its inquiry into hackers who breached the company's cyber security defenses last year, an official in charge of public relations in Google China said: "As we have said before, we are not commenting on our investigation."
To dispel doubts from the outside, Google has emphasized that its cooperation with the NSA will not leak user information.
But French information technology Website Generation Nouvelles Technologies commented that Google's promise can hardly convince others, especially when people are facing agencies like the NSA, which is notorious for intercepting e-mail and enjoys judicial right of exemption.
Observers believe Google is likely to be the first and foremost victim of the cooperation with the NSA because Internet users will express their disgust by their clicks.
(The author is a Xinhua writer.)
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