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Google Engineer Spied On Teen Users

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.

bonch writes "Former Google employee David Barksdale accessed user accounts to spy on call logs, chat transcripts, contact lists. As a Site Reliability Engineer, Barksdale had access to the company's most sensitive information and even unblocked himself from a teen's buddy list. He met the minors through a Seattle technology group. Angry parents cut off contact with him and complained to Google, who quietly fired him."

20 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Do No Evil by whisper_jeff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google's policy may be "Do No Evil" but each individual's policy may differ...

    1. Re:Do No Evil by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the quietly letting him go rather than warning others about this persons actions is ... whose policy?

    2. Re:Do No Evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unless he is charged and convicted, let's not hang a man in the realm of public opinion. He was fired, and hopefully he learned something.

    3. Re:Do No Evil by nschubach · · Score: 4, Funny

      So new that Slashdot hasn't had time to assign them a user ID.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    4. Re:Do No Evil by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Holy shit, Pope Benedict must be a majority shareholder at Google!

      It said quietly fired, not quietly transferred to a different regional office.

  2. Always a concern by Pojut · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You never know who is watching or listening in. People don't realize that every single thing they do online can, at some point along the pipe, be potentially seen by someone.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:Always a concern by sjs132 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      An old friend of mine used to work for a high clearance group out in Colorado someplace. This is going back to 1995'sh... He has since gone silent (No contacts) , but I remember one conversation that we had had where he warned:

      "If you want it to be a secret you better keep it in your head. Don't write it down, don't email it, don't call on the phone... Because if they want, they can know." (Paraphrased from so long ago...) But you get the point.

      It was true then and even more so now. Who are "They"? Well, that's the problem... in 1995 I presumed it was the Federal Government that could disseminate the information to state/local. And under Homeland Security we do have "FUSION CENTERS" so you know that happens. But also it seems corporations of large magnitude can fall into it. If it is for "research, Statistics & Administration" then big whoop, but obviously it is a big temptation for people to abuse it once they are on the "inside."

      Case in point would be Crystal Bowersox. She had her privacy violated multiple times in Ohio. Probably by people paid to dig up dirt for tabloids or something, but just like Google, Creepy.

      http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/09/09/copy/ohio-apologized-to-idol-star-for-illegal-snooping.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

      http://content.usatoday.com/communities/idolchatter/post/2010/09/crystal-bowersoxs-privacy-breached-by-ohio-officials/1

      http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/09/ohio-apologizes-to-crystal-bowersox-for-security-breach/

      http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i_29YKZdSnooBzedGCwrNGaqfyDgD9I4IR7G1

      http://au.eonline.com/uberblog/b199540_why_were_cops_snooping_on_idols_crystal.html

       

      --
      --- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
  3. Duh by ebonum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Young single male admins at companies like Google and Yahoo are golden contacts. If you are looking to research something, they can help. For a price.

  4. Come on... by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    ...the question is: what's his /. ID? It must be in the 4 or 5 figure range.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  5. Re:Happens on every website. by Aqualung812 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is Google. They drive up and take pictures of your house.

    OMG! Pictures of my house, on a public street, where thousands of people can drive by and see it? MY PRIVACY IS RUINED! I might as well post my SSN on the Internet now!

    --
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  6. This just in! by mdm-adph · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Individual person does nefarious actions -- name of company he works for used in title of news article for salacious reasons. More at 11.

    --
    It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
    1. Re:This just in! by Combatso · · Score: 4, Insightful

      so you think they should have left out Googles name? I for one will think twice about how private any emails / chats sent through google really are. Without getting in to a 'think of the children' rant here... the real story is this guy was spying on teenagers conversations, chatting with them... and actually unblocked himself... if one rogue employee at google can do this, than many more can... and I stand by theory that anything than can happen, will happen... So yeah... the company name belongs here..

  7. Re:Did Google do enough? by bberens · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google has no grounds to prosecute the guy. The kids/parents may have some grounds based on harassment or something but the guy legitimately had access to that data, he just abused it. It happens, he was fired. I love these posts which act as if "my company" could never hire anyone who would abuse their access to data. It happens regularly at every company I've ever worked at to some degree or another. When it happens, you deal with it. *shrug*

    --
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  8. Cannot really be prevented by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As anybody with real system administration experience knows, what protects user privacy is that you do not look at their data without explicit permission. That means people with this level of access have to have certain personality traits, and a high level of personal integrity is the most important one. I guess this is just another failed Google hiring process result.

    What now needs to follow is criminal proceedings resulting in a a rather unpleasant punishment. Oh, wait, the US does not have working privacy laws...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  9. Re:More than enough reason for no business by jgagnon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly... any admin worth their position could extract similar information from their corporate network. This was an inside job like any other inside job. It's only news because it is Google.

    If this has been an admin of Facebook or MySpace it would have had similar impact. It should be no surprise that any information you give to a company is available to their admins to use or abuse.

    --
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  10. Surprise! by nomad-9 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Hardly surprising, since Google CEO Eric Schmidt's notorious "if you want privacy, you have something to hide" remark.

    The problem with this guy power-tripping on some kids, was not that he didn't give importance to people's privacy - which is apparently along the lines of the company's general mindset - but that he got caught for being stupid.

  11. ah by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny
    What part of heaven is most popular?

    ...the fucking Cloud.

  12. Re:More than enough reason for no business by arivanov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was not Google who caught the guy which is what is worrying in this case, it was the parents of the kids involved.

    I would have expected a shop of their size to have proper security and use at least some of their precious IPR on log analysis.

    --
    Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
    http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  13. Re:More than enough reason for no business by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hell, I'm not even an admin worthy of the position - and I can do as you say. Crap - some ditzy female was playing one of the kids for a fool - I knew she was a worthless tramp, but you don't just tell your kids that, because they will HATE YOU FOREVER for interfering in their personal love lives. Well - she used a computer at my house to read some personal emails and such stuff. Dad just forwarded all the dirt, complete with account passwords, to the son via a "proxy". The female disappeared from the son's life faster than pizza on football night. No, I don't condone spying on people - but bitches don't count, LOL

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  14. Re:More than enough reason for no business by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I dunno, at places I've been the low-level sysadmin access is not very closely monitored. "Official" access through the normal APIs is logged and monitored, but when the Unix sysadmin has root on the database machine, he could be grepping through the database for all anybody knows.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10