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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.

17 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?

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  2. There was no leak by JarekC · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The tricky part is there was no leak. The data was available, but there is no evidence of any unauthorized access. So technically they were not required to report the leak, because there was no leak.

    Let's say they promised to keep your cash safe, then kept the safe unlocked for a couple of months, then realized what's up and locked it before anyone noticed. Are they legally obliged to tell you about it?

    So even if they are assholes from moral point of view, legally they may be clean.

    1. Re:There was no leak by Diakoneo · · Score: 2

      Much like Watergate, it wasn't the crime that caused the fallout. It was the cover up.

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    2. 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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    3. Re:There was no leak by swillden · · Score: 2

      Did they really have enough logs to confirm there wasn't a leak?

      Or are they saying that based on what logs they had available they could see no leak?

      The second one. The first is not possible in practice: How can you know your logging code is bug free? It is in a system with a security hole, so claiming it is flawless is hubris.

      It was not a "system with a security hole" in the normal sense of the phrase. It was a system with an API that provided access to too much user data.

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    4. Re:There was no leak by terjeber · · Score: 4, Funny

      Did they really have enough logs to confirm there wasn't a leak?

      They did a quick questionnaire in the hacking community. They asked plainly asked, "Have you hacked Google+", all the answers came "Google what?" So then they knew.

  3. 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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  4. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by pgmrdlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    f IT is biased against republicans,
    I think the bias you are talking about occurs in coastal states, which are predominantly liberal.

    and news media is biased against republicans,
    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides. Maybe not always, but the effort is there. Also, if a person is smart. They reference multiple sites when getting their information. Both opposed and for any given subject.

    and Hollywood is biased against republicans,Again, not all Hollywood. Look up republican actors/actress's.

    and women are all biased against republicans
    There are women republican senators, governors, congresswomen, business leaders, and just every day American citizens.

    if sports is biased against republicans,
    Easier just to link on this one: https://www.ranker.com/list/sp...

    if social media is biased against republicans,
    This one, I actually think is true when it comes to our main stream social media.

    immigrants are biased against republicans,
    Immigrants, or minorities? Or Naturalized citizen? I don't think all are against republicans.

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  5. 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.

  6. Support the Narrative by Puls4r · · Score: 2

    This is all optics in the government's current pursuit of the pockets of the big IT corporations.

    Approximately 430 people had access to the API. Google knows who those people are.

    This API was for Google+. Despite reporting that glosses over the fact. Google+ is an unused wasteland where social media accounts go to die.

    There is no proof, in fact not even a suggestion, that this bug was known in the wild. They've not found it on the usual suspect web pages where information like this is sold.

    There is no log or data (according to Google) that it was ever exploited.

    This news-event is entirely artificial and is being used to build a case. The motivation here is not to fix a problem, it's to create a bigger problem/outcry/outrage so that something else happens. It's unfortunate that the Slashdot contributors can't recognize a tempest in a teapot.

  7. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by edi_guy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You can likely extend this as a trait for American's in general. As a nation we have far and away the most economic power, most military power, massive and varied natural resources, and a forgiving climate. Our immediate border neighbors are small, friendly, non-threatening, and there's only two of them. Our enemies are all geographically very, very far away, across huge oceans. And yet, as a society we feel like the rest of the world is out to get us. Or is cheating us our of our fair share in some way, even though demonstrably we have way more than our 'fair share'.

    Not even a Democrat/Republican thing as I see this behavior in myself as well, and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.

  8. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

    You hear it again and again, so you integrate with it. It's fear, uncertainty, insecurity.

    You have to figure out what you believe the world should be, not what in the world is scary and wrong. You can't be against things; you have to be for things.

    If you're against something, it's because it's threatening. If your only answer is that it should stop, or that you should fight it, then you're going to be running around frightened and angry all the time, seeing demons in the shadows.

  9. What could go wrong? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't know about you guys, but I totally trust the Senate to investigate google in an ethical and unbiased way and not try to use this to gain political advantage or punish perceived enemies.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  10. The crime in Watergate was still pretty bad by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Informative

    Breaking and entering to get dirt on your political rival. And no, "everybody did it" is not an excuse. Nixon had a pretty crazy disregard for the rule of law, going so far as to kick off the Drug War in order to crack down on the left wing because he knew they smoked pot. That's not a conspiracy theory, his own people came out later, admitted it and apologized for it.

    I'd call this a hit piece except Google gets along just fine with the Republican majority. They supported the last few Supreme Court Nominees (albeit on the sly via various PACs) and were happy to take the tax cut.

    What this is really is enemy creation. Racism is winding down as an effective vehicle for making bogymen. But any good ruling class needs a way to divide the working class. Instead of Black/White they're working on Technocrat/Blue Collar as the next point of division.

    This is how the Japanese created their divides to keep the working class from organizing, BTW. They declared some professions as "bad" (unclean ones, like butcher and undertaker) and kept books of who was who based on family names. That's how you create classes without racial divides.

    What annoys me is we see this pattern over and over again. The Japanese, India Caste systems, American Racial Slavery, hell the Canadians have been caught doing it with Eskimos (South Park made fun of it). You'd think the working class would catch on to the trick and stop being fooled but so far, no dice...

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  11. 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".

  12. 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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  13. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by SirAstral · · Score: 2

    You can't have unbiased media, the idea is a sign of ignorance. In fact the pursuit of it creates an even more false narrative.

    Let's analyze your bias. You think the media is right... this means you are likely "extreme left" because to a person at the fringe sees even light handed leftist as being right.

    I see see the media as majority Left for most of world TV, I view Fox and very few others as being Right, and most of Radio in the US seems Right to me as well. This means I am likely more right than left since I do see more left bias out there but since I see some balance between them I have a chance of being centrist also.

    Your claims about which side is lying more... well do you have the numbers? I have seen so many lies on both sides that the only thing I can tell you is this. Both lie so much that it is not even possible to call out which side lies more and any attempt to do so is tantamount to admitting ignorance and bias.

    The problem is so bad that in my opinion, trying to keep to either of these parties indicates that you mean to support the lies you like and only complain about the lies you hate. And if you are okay with your side lying because it advances the agenda then you lose any moral right to complain about the other side lying.

    And if you don't think that your side is lying to this degree, then you are indoctrinated to the point that you are not likely able to be reasoned with. The only chance of you seeing the lies of your party will only be when you "personally" face the fallout of such lies in your everyday life in a way that it forces you to face reality. And I say chance of that because there are lots of people suffering under the ideas of the people they elected into office but still support those that have harmed them as they say... maybe we will do better next time as they keep taking campaign donations from places you sometimes know and most times don't.