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Google Engineers Refused To Build Security Tool To Win Military Contracts (bloomberg.com)
Mark Bergen reports via Bloomberg: Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in Google's cloud division surprised their superiors by refusing to work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as "air gap," the technology would have helped Google win sensitive military contracts. The coders weren't persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war, according to four current and former employees. After hearing the engineers' objections, Urs Holzle, Google's top technical executive, said the air gap feature would be postponed, one of the people said. Another person familiar with the situation said the group was able to reduce the scope of the feature.
The act of rebellion ricocheted around the company, fueling a growing resistance among employees with a dim view of Google's yen for multi-million-dollar government contracts. The engineers became known as the "Group of Nine" and were lionized by like-minded staff. The current and former employees say the engineers' work boycott was a catalyst for larger protests that convulsed the company's Mountain View, California, campus and ultimately forced executives to let a lucrative Pentagon contract called Project Maven expire without renewal.
The act of rebellion ricocheted around the company, fueling a growing resistance among employees with a dim view of Google's yen for multi-million-dollar government contracts. The engineers became known as the "Group of Nine" and were lionized by like-minded staff. The current and former employees say the engineers' work boycott was a catalyst for larger protests that convulsed the company's Mountain View, California, campus and ultimately forced executives to let a lucrative Pentagon contract called Project Maven expire without renewal.
That is in line with their "Do No Evil...except in oppressive nations" motto.
There was a day when faithful employees would gleefully bilk the government for every penny to deliver substandard performance instead of simply refusing.
They're better off anyway removing everyone's privacy to slice and dice audience segments for Madison Ave.
Oh look, tin foil is 20% at Home Depot Online with coupon code ACNUTTER2018.
Good! This is what people with morals are supposed to do. Now, if only we could have the same thing happen in our military, too, the world would be in a lot better shape.
I don't respond to AC's.
Is it just me or does "air gap" sound like the kind thing best implemented in hardware?
I have no issues doing any job (well most! there are some I would turn down).
Google employees refuse to work on improved data protection and privacy features.
Helping the dictatorial Chinese government find, imprison, torture and execute political prisoners: A-OK
Helping your own country's military to keep its citizens safe: unacceptable
Clearly Google engineers have their priority straight. If you're going to help the military, it has to be a Communist one.
fewer snowflakes
"Air gap." Give me a break.
>"The coders weren't persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war,"
"Wage war"?
1) We are not talking about a weapon.
2) We aren't even talking about something that attacks or even spies on other countries or citizens, it is a computer security concept. Is better security "bad"?
3) Why would the technology be used to "wage war"? Perhaps it might be to avoid war or lose important information. Is that "bad"?
4) Or even if it could help to win a war [that protects Google, too], if it came to that, is that "bad"?
5) If it enabled more secure "cloud" use by the military and saved tons of money, which means either less taxes or money better spent elsewhere, is that "bad"?
6) Wouldn't some other company develop it instead?
7) Couldn't it have non-military uses to improve security?
It is one thing to stand on morals and principles. But what exactly is gained by anyone in this case?
1. Spin off a company just for defense / military.
2. Hire non-creampuff non-snowflake types.
3. Profit!
I applaud the worker's decision to not work on this, but also they must recognize that by pissing off their company, they can be fired.
As much as I hate google, I also applaud their desire to work on such things. The best things in tech have all been fueled by ... war. All. Of. Them.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Iâ(TM)m confident the winner of the contract appreciates their non effort.
Personally I agree that any business has a right to reject on moral or ethical reasons. Even a cake baker should have that right isn't that right Google? I guess the Supreme's agreed on that one. I am sure the Military can contract out this to some other tech company just as a gay couple could find a baker to bake them a cake. Its all about respecting others and not forcing businesses to do what they do not feel they support.
...gets fired.
As a business move, is government contracting really a good business for Google? They just got done (wisely) paring down distracting side ventures.How does this advance their core business?
Yes, government contracting can be profitable, but not the kind of profitable that Google's used to. Plus, government work comes with lots of cumbersome strings attached.
I wonder how many of these people are foreign nationals. I suspect they hate the United States and view its citizens with contempt. I bet they are more than happy to help the Chinese Communist Party suppress free speech.
First is was the removal of estimated calories burned in the Google maps directions, should you choose to walk instead of drive - that's apparently "fat shaming". Then they fired James Damore for expressing controversial opinions (right or wrong, where is the "diversity" and "open discussion" Google preaches they want? I guess it doesn't include ideological diversity). Then things like this. How long before Google maps won't show you restaurants that serve meat, or cheese?
Federal contracting IS an industry unto itself, and not one of Google's core competencies. Cool new tech is something Google does.
*IF* they were to be involved in a federal contract, they might want to let IBM handle the federal process - IBM has a whole department or two that just does federal contracts. Then subcontract the tech to Google.
there's tons of money in defense contracting (most of it for the owners, but I digress). They didn't sign on for that. This isn't a 'slippery slope' argument. It logically stands to reason that one successful contract leads to another. This is google engineers taking a stand now before the company they work for becomes the next Raytheon making missiles we sell to the Saudis that wind up hitting Doctors Without Boarders sites in Yemen. If you're going to take such a stand the time to do it is early on before Google has so much money coming in that they can afford to fire you and all your friends.
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they're at the top of the game. They couldn't care less if they got fired. They probably spend 4 hours a week clearing through emails from headhunters. There aren't a lot of workers in this country that have any leverage (hence the reason wages keep going down) but there are a few.
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They should have been fired.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Yeah, I just can't wrap my head around it. They're just refusing to develop a non internet connected app.
Either that or they don't want to go through the TS-SCI Lifestyle Poly because it'll reveal that they've murdered people, openly supported sex trafficking, CP, and net neutrality.
Creating an air gap is not a "technology". It's a process of separating a computer system from the Internet. Or, rather, not connecting it to the Internet in the first place. I'm guessing most people reading this know that, but the idiots that wrote the article make it sound like Google is refusing to invest a bunch of money and resources into creating some kind of complicated software that doesn't exist yet.
Here's what I think is going on, Google has a business model based on hoovering up personal data in order to sell more advertising. Without the ability to sell adverts on the platform they'd be unable to take advantage of the subsidy to the services they provide to sell at a price below the competition. Instead of simply stating that it would be unprofitable for them to create an air gap system they claim that they are taking some moral high ground.
Congratulations Google, you have been successful in creating clickbait that suckered me in. While I'm sure that got you some more advert money the people that know what an "air gap" actually is aren't going to be fooled. You just advertised that you are not willing to take computer security seriously, and you are willing to give up profitable government contracts to your competitors.
In addition to your desire to hire based on skin color over technical merit I'm guessing that you are on a path to oblivion. One might say that they are paving a path with good intentions.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Since the US military (actually foreign policy) is pretty evil; as a nation US has killed the most people in wars the last 2-3 decades.
I thought that was called slavery.
> Even a cake baker should have that right isn't that right Google? I guess the Supreme's agreed on that one.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court didn't rule on that issue.
In Masterpiece Bakery, the case was decided based on the Colorado commission's stated hatred of religion as being the basis for their ruling.
The baker told the couple he would gladly sell them cookies, brownies, etc - anything that's not custom made with messages or decorations celebrating gay marriage. He would not, he said, use his artistic talents to create a message celebrating something that was illegal at time, and he believed was anti-Biblical.
The Colorado Commission had consistently sided with Baker's and others who refused to create messages, on cakes and elsewhere, that were critical of illegal gay marriage. Bakers and others can refuse to make things with a message they find objectionable, the commission said, based on their free speech rights. Commissioners stated, on the record, in the hearing, that they were ruling against this Baker because moral standards based on *religion* are "despicable". In a later hearing, the commissioner, again on record, compared the refusal to celebrate gay marriage to the Holocaust, and suggested that the Holocaust was caused by religion. That unfairness, that blatant, stated discrimination against religious-based morals by the state, is what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional.
So a one-sentence summary of the Masterpiece decision is:
When the government is violating the first amendment freedom of religion, they shouldn't say out loud "I'm doing this because I hate religious people".
When James damore rebels against Google because of his right wing beliefs, you all applaud him. When someone rebels in a way that doesn't align with the right, you cry.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
And it means exactly nothing. The best implementation I ever saw was a pair of boxes with a physical "air gap" in the middle and a wireless connection going over it. To be not completely useless, it had a conventional firewall in there as well, but the term "air gap" is meaningless these days. It used to mean "physically isolated", but those days are over.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why are snowflakes against military contracts???
Loony left strikes again?? Seriously, what the fuck. Air Gap has nothing to do with Millitary. _ANY_ highly secure system could (and probably should), use some form of it. Yes that includes Millitary but also Banks, and Enterprises.
It simply means isolation from physical contact, thus air gapped. Think of scenes from War Games or Sneakers where big iron systems are locked behind enclosed rooms. That is air gap.
There is a rather silly idea what you can air gap a network attached system, I'll give them that. It largely comes from security vendors like McAfee who sell 2FA "solutions". There are a lot of concepts behind it but the basic idea is your requied to authenticate with 2FA before any access is given, internal or external. You're also not allowed to connect directly to productions systems.
I really get the feeling agents within Google (say from China and India), are intentionally trying to undermine even their corporate security by captializing on _any_ kind of dissent. Google has some serious problems internally if they're not aware of it.
It was an American owned company operating in Canada. Canadian law and US law said we couldn't use a persons address to discriminate on them. The law should have said where a person lived but it said "Address". The US company was converting addresses into longitude and latitude and then using that to make decisions. I thought this was morally wrong and brought it up with my bosses. My bosses had already known this was coming and had no intention of following it. What they did do was create two ratings. One was that didn't use a persons location and was used to determine what a person was offered. The other rating was a likelihood of fraud score and did use the address however this score was used strictly in a binary way. Ratings over certain number were assumed to be fraudulent and the applicant was just dropped.
Looking at the quality of our competitors products I can say we had far more competent engineers and I think the ethics of senior management was a big reason for this.
If Sergey wanted to get the project all they had to do is walk over and unplug the wire to the hardware running the project. It's not that hard and doesn't require an engineer.
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but, when dealing with human beings, you should know that just about everyone has a price at which they can be bought.
( With enough Carrots, you don't need a stick )
Feeble human traits like nobility, doing-the-right-thing, ethics, morals, etc. are no match for the promises of Wealth.
( You may come to regret such a decision in later years, but we rarely think that far ahead )
They put enough money in front of these people and I guarantee you this becomes a totally different story.
One that doesn't have the "feel-good-they're-doing-the-right-thing" happy ending. ( Unless you're Google or the Military )
At some point, if they throw enough money your way, even the purest and nigh-incorruptible will fall from grace.
There is no cure for it.
It's what we are.
Software engineers are a dime a dozen and if you dont think so then just hit your local job board. Lots of jobs and lots of engineers to fill them. There are a ton of engineers that would love to have their rediculous pay
Notice how the government doesn't give you these rights -- you have them regardless of whether the government recognizes them.
No, actually you don't have any rights at all. All you have is a restriction on the US government passing several laws. This is a very important distinction because if you actually had a "right" to free speech private companies would also have to respect that right. As it is they can fire you and/or make your life hell if they happen to disagree with you...as Google has done in the past.
And that'll bite them when china / russia / hands the US their arse when Googles project may have prevented .
Engineers should *NEVER* get involved politically. If I were Google I'd be looking at those guys career progressions within the company very carefully, any supporters with influence and diverting them to a dead-end job role where they can't do any damage if they turned rogue asap
..trying to save face now that its tech has fallen hopelessly behind and they are already bending over for China in the attempt to suck out a few more bucks>
When people lack meaning in their lives, they have to find it somewhere, I suppose.
Too bad the posturing is meaningless.
"Air gap" is a cutting edge feature? We had an air gap between our little WordPerfect network (in a military office) and the world in 1996 ...
Whatever this is, I guess it isn't an actual air gap.
Are we pretending their brave decision to not do the job their employer wanted prevented the project from going forward? Are we assuming the gov't didn't just the the project outline and RFP to another vendor and pay them handsomely for the work Google refused?
I suspect there's comparison to be made with florists and came bakers, but I haven't had my morning caffeine yet, so I'll defer to others about companies that find their clients 'objectionable' and refuse to work for them.
Ken
I'm betting the sales guys who were looking to clear some serious $ in the fed space are now actively looking for new jobs. They're not getting pushed out. They're leaving.
I'm sure the Microsoft and oracle reps will be happy to compete for the $.
Moves like this aren't necessarily wrong or right. If the corporation values engineers opinions about what's right and wrong, the market will speak. I personally think Google is lost. If these engineers get to decide what Google works on, what's next? Not doing work for states who voted for Trump? How about orgs who don't have the right ratio of women to men as execs? The slope now, is already slippery for Google. It's just waiting for the next thing to object about.
Google, the ad words monopoly company, can afford to dabble in stuff , and patronize engineering deciding what the corporation should work on. But the market will happily fill the void for them.
Ive got no scruples i'll do it.
Good dog, have a treat (violently yanks leash, nearly choking dog and breaking it's neck)..NOW GET BACK TO WORK, YOU STUPID MUTT!
The military is a blight on the US. Sooner it gets a 90% budget cut the better
In February 1933, the Oxford Union debated the pacifistic motion, "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country." The proposition was approved 275 votes to 153. Pacifism won, not just at Oxford, but throughout Britain. Appeasement became a policy of the British government in part because of the belief that the people would not fight. Appeasement encouraged Nazi aggrandizement. War followed anyway, despite the high-minded gestures of a bunch of undergraduates. I know, amazing, right? And many of them got to fight anyway.
Last time i checked if your employees said they aren't going to work on a project, you find ones that will. I bet you if they were offered a commission on the sale.... they would have stfu and started working for that lambo. looks like more money for Amazon AWS services lol.
Speak for yourself. There are some people who don't have a price. I'm sorry that you do, and can't even imagine that some people don't.
I don't respond to AC's.
Nope, its not the military, they only use it when they are allowed. You are building something for the politicians, they decide when and where they are to be used, they also decide who they sell them to. Remember that ancient sale of F111s the US sent to Iran? Yep, a year later, they were our enemy again!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Employees who refuse to work simply need to find a new job or or be fired.
At some point there will be the "Animal loving nine" who have moral objections to advertising or providing directions to any restaurants serving meat or cheese. Google will be forced to remove all but strictest vegan restaurants from their maps and advertising platforms. I wonder how much will employees with their belief objections have to hurt the company bottom line before the company just fires anyone who doesn't agree.