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Senators Demand Google Hand Over Internal Memo Urging Google+ Cover-up (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google demanding the company hand over an internal memo based on which Google decided to cover up a Google+ data leak instead of going public as most companies do. The existence of this internal memo came to light on Monday in a Wall Street Journal article that forced Google to go public with details about a Google+ API bug that could have been used to harvest data on Google users.

According to the report, the internal memo, signed by Google's legal and policy staff, advised Google top execs not to disclose the existence of the API bug fearing "immediate regulatory interest." Google's legal staff also feared that the bug would bring Google "into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal," and would "almost [guarantee] Sundar will testify before Congress," akin to Facebook's CEO. In a letter sent today to Google, three GOP senators want to see this internal memo for themselves by October 30, and also with on-the-record answers to seven questions in regards to what, why, and how Google handled the Google+ API data leak.

6 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?

    As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.

    If IT is biased against republicans,
    and news media is biased against republicans,
    and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
    and women are all biased against republicans,
    if sports is biased against republicans,
    if social media is biased against republicans,
    immigrants are biased against republicans,
    and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

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  2. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?

    In spite of it?

    It shows how weak the "Racist, Sexist, Bigot, Homophobic ..." chanting actually is.

    It shows how lame the Democrats are. Pelosi is their leader? REALLY?

    It shows enough people don't believe the crap they are all are spewing.

    Could you imagine what the democrat party would be like without their mouthpieces, stand ins, surrogates and lap dogs spewing daily propaganda?

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  3. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by David_Hart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.

    No, all media is biased. It's just that not all media is biased in the same way. Some media may be less biased than others, but none are perfectly objective. If you think that as long as "both sides" of the issue are presented it must mean the media is unbiased, you've fallen into one hell of a trap. There's an entire world of possibility outside of "both sides" of issue. You can sample "both sides" of the same turd, but you're eating shit either way.

    The biggest problem with attempting to be even-handed is that you full into the trap of lending credence to arguments that are not worth listening to simply because they are built on a house of falsehoods. And yet ignoring falsehoods creates a trap where one side believes that the only reason why those arguments aren't being aired is due to biased media.

  4. Re:There was no leak by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except in this case, the cover up isn't illegal, either, and hiding embarrassing things from the government is a rational strategy, what with its itchy regulatory trigger finger pushed by transient outrage fanned by politicians themselves.

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  5. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Pascoea · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.

    I'm going to guess it has something to do with us being insulated from how truly shitty of a life some people in this world have. The threshold for having a "shitty day" for most people in the US is generally somewhere between "stuck in traffic" and "lost my job", not "I haven't eaten this week".

  6. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?

    Republicans don't see themselves as perpetual victims, but they acknowledge that there are particular organizations that are biased against them and between the two? You bet. There's *a lot* of money at stake, and the democrats/progressives and in general most of the left are pro-globalization/demolishing western culture/etc and this directly aligns with progressive agenda 'we can change the world because reasons.' Note that here in the west the left have had a monopoly on media and education for the better part of 40 years. I use "the left" in a broad term in this case, but you can round it out from environmentalism shifting to hyper-environmentalism that humans need to die. To higher education moving from that into a diploma mill situation where the shittiest courses(gender studies and the ilk of shitty humanities courses), are mandatory or you can't graduate or even pass the first year and teaching that republicans/conservatives/libertarians are evil/wrong/degenerates or whatever else. Or that "speech is dangerous" or "speech is violence" that are commonly used by progressives and the left, you can round it out with the blanket uses of racist, sexist, misogynist, rapist, and nazi if you're feeling ambitious.

    Now you ask how can they hold both houses and the president. That one is far easier, because the rest of society has had enough of the politically correct, don't say mean words, if you say the wrong thing we'll ruin your life, we need to pander to special interests that amount to 0.02% of the population, we can find the money for illegals/foreign country/some special cause - but we can't find the $1.17/mo for people on social assistance, or disability, the person waiting 18 months for cataract surgery(to use an example from here in Ontario), fuck you and your "but I just want a nice blue collar job" you're gonna work 3 jobs in the service industry and like it pleb, "culture - lol? diversity is our strength, you don't have a culture" "we need to import more people from the 3rd world, oh and raise your taxes to do it" bullshit that's been building up over the last ~15-20ish years or so. This isn't unique to the US either, over the last couple of years here in Canada the same thing has happened.

    How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

    See this is the part where it diverges, this isn't a republican issue. It's a people who don't buy into the identity politics and who is or isn't pushing it, you've seen it already. ~30-40 years ago? You betcha that conservatives were doing the same. But now we've got the groups who blame men for whatever reasons, they're the fault of all of societies ills, push all men are rapists/abusers/etc. Tell whites or asians that they're privileged, so they don't deserve the spot in university/job openings for only particular groups of people. It has to go to the person who's 'getting their scores adjusted' because they couldn't cut it otherwise. That *insert minority/trendy sexual identity/etc* should have the job because *random diversity reason here* and not the best person for the job. A decade ago everyone had pretty much bought into it? Oh you bet their ass they did, it was trendy hot shit. Everyone bought into the "we need to help people" well helping is good and believed that it was a case of "this person didn't have the resources, so lets help them out." It turns out that people have problems when the unqualified or diversity pick gets pushed through a head of them though because it simply "looks good for social capital."

    But, now the interesting part. Look at the media, entertainment rags, and whatever else for the last couple of days over Kanye West. What do we have left-leaningm progressives, their pundits and democrats saying? He's a house negro, dumb, token, white supremacist, minstrel(aka puppet). That

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