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.

Comments

Re:So Dems don't care I guess

[Oswald McWeany]

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?

There was no leak

[JarekC]

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.

Re:There was no leak

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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.

Re:There was no leak

[terjeber]

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.

Re:So Dems don't care I guess

[edi_guy]

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.

The crime in Watergate was still pretty bad

[rsilvergun]

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...