Google, NSA team up: What does that mean for privacy?

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) based in Washington, DC has filed a request for information on reports of Google’s plan to partner with the U.S. National Security Agency to assist in analyzing a recent cyber-attack that allegedly originated from China in January of 2010.  Furthermore, Google will look to partner with the NSA to better understand how and who breached its network and for recommendations on how to better protect its network and users from future cyber attacks. This proposed agreement between Google and the NSA has sparked some controversy.

Many people and privacy organizations are wondering if this agreement could result in the government gaining access to user’s personal information, but according to an article in The Washington Post, they stated Google would not share user search data or e-mail information as part of the NSA partnership.

In addition, Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, stated, “Google turned to the agency because of its expertise in cyber-security.  Any suggestion it will simply hand over its user data is completely unrealistic.”

The NSA has long held a reputation for having some of the brightest and smartest information security geeks in the business and for those of us in the industry, the move makes perfect sense.  The NSA has offered its services successfully in the past to conduct penetration testing at the request of other government agencies for the purpose of locating network security holes and providing remediation advice.  However, as SecurityOrb.com stated on its recent blog posting, “there are just as many private companies qualified to provide the services being sought out by Google from the NSA”.

People are very skeptic due to a past relationship the NSA had with another major US company, namely AT&T.  In 2006, reports suggested that the NSA used information provided by AT&T to secretly build detailed records of phone calls made by millions of Americans and some fear it is the NSA’s intention to do the same in this partnership with Google.

Google has an estimate of over 150 million gmail email users monthly all of which would be affected by the partnership.  That is why EPIC is trying to get all the details of prior Google and NSA communications as well as details pertaining to the agreement.