ACLU: No to Google-NSA alliance
By Pulkit Sharma

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is highly regarded for its courageous battles to protect human and civil rights.  It is staffed by idealists who have taken huge pay cuts to work for a cause they believe in. It has the same credibility as public interest organizations like Greenpeace and Red Cross.

When Chinese hackers broken into Google China, the American search engine giant threatened to withdraw from the communist country.  Even though all the evidence points to China, it denied any hacking.  The American Government made the right noises but did not really push the issue.  Why did the American Government make threatening noises but never pushed China?  Because the American Government through its security agency NSA does the same to China, India and other countries.

Google, instead of strengthening the security of its software and hiring even more IT Security experts, reached out to the American spy agency NSA for help in stopping the Chinese.  This was a mistake as the NSA (National Security Agency) is a tool of the American Government to hack into other countries computer and phone networks. The NSA has a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars to spy on other countries. This would be akin to TCS or Infosys teaming up with IB/RAW and not expecting any demands from the India Government.  Most private companies avoid security alliances with the intelligence wings of any Government as it would cost them clients in other countries.

The American Civil Liberties Union has just blogged against the Google-NSA alliance.  Google risks the privacy of its users by teaming up with any spy agency.

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Cybersecurity is Not Your Gig, NSA!

The news that the NSA and Google are working on a deal for the military agency to help protect the information giant's data networks comes at a time when the NSA is angling to get a major piece of cybersecurity action.

The only problem is, despite what the agency would have us believe, the NSA is mainly a spy agency, not a cybersecurity agency. The agency's website says: The NSA/CSS core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.

The Information Assurance mission confronts the formidable challenge of preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to sensitive or classified national security information. The Signals Intelligence mission collects, processes, and disseminates intelligence information from foreign signals for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military operations.

NSA is an intelligence agency, plain and simple, and we should continue saying so. Take action today by sending a letter to Google, letting them know that you object to such a deal and value your privacy online.
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