
Search is on for Google workers leaking secrets - fallingfrog
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/search-is-on-for-google-workers-leaking-secrets-9j39cslww
======
mabbo
There are two kinds of leaks.

The first kind is leaks for glory, profit, etc, ie: we're about to release
this hot new product and I'm sneakily letting TechNews.whatever know about it
ahead of time. Maybe you get paid for this leak. Maybe you just do it because
you're excited or want to feel important. It's rule-breaking behavior for
personal gain, monetary or otherwise.

The second kind is the moral, ethical leak. Whistle-blowing. My
company/government is doing something that I find horrendous, that violates my
ethics, that I think is or should be illegal, and I want the world to know
about it. I also don't want to lose my job because despite not liking what my
organization is doing, I also like my life as it is. This is rule-breaking
behavior not for personal gain, but for a sense of morality.

We should not let ourselves believe these are the same thing. The first is a
selfish act, while the second is (to some extent) a selfless one. Those who
yell "F--- you leakers" are trying to convince you its the same thing and use
the negative emotions directed at the first to convince people not to do the
second.

~~~
vxxzy
One must take responsibility for one’s morals. Our given set of societal/legal
norms impart a certain level of responsibility. Because of the law, one must
be responsible whether one likes it or not. The individual sits at the mercy
of the society in which the individual exists. I suppose the only recourse for
the individual is to help change society (this is slow, and requires even more
responsibility) OR move to a different society.

~~~
triplesec
Upholding an ethical morality is not the same as following the law. The law
frequently does not follow the values or mores of the people themselves. And
often even if it is close it lags behind in time and it is only the actions of
people contrary to the law which changes it. So, I believe that your claims
are unsound. Indeed it is irresponsible to follow an unjust law comma because
then you will just be reinforcing injustices. See the American civil rights
movement for good examples of this.

~~~
vxxzy
morals != laws. Re-read and you will see no association made in the grammar.
Words tend to reflect back the ideas and beliefs of the reader.

~~~
triplesec
it appears to be the same thing in your comment, because you say that because
there is a law people have a responsibility. And that responsibility to the
law becomes a moral responsibility according to the way I have read what you
say that makes sense as a response to the original comment. If you would like
to explain it some another way then please do!

~~~
vxxzy
The law forces one be responsible (without choice). If a law is passed to
“kick the leakers”, then if one leaks, they will be held responsible by having
a good kicking for not bearing the responsibility of upholding the law.
Morally, the individual is opposed to the law. Fine. Great. Even without the
law, one is still responsible for their morals. Maybe the society doesn’t
“kick” people, maybe society supports leakers. Doesn’t matter. There have been
countless individuals acting “morally” (in their view), and we as a society
have held them responsible. One should balance one’s actions against their
morals, and society’s law.

~~~
danShumway
Well there's the conflict then. Many people believe that morals are more
important than the law, not the other way around.

And really, what you're talking about is a balance. Very few people actually
believe that anyone has a total responsibility to always submit to punishments
for laws. Nobody argues that people who helped slaves escape from their
masters should have turned themselves into the state afterwards. Nobody argues
that a North Korean dissonant should hang a sign on their door announcing
their intentions to defect. Nobody argues that before the Boston Tea Party
everyone involved should have said, "well there's no need for these disguises,
the point will be the same regardless of whether we go to jail afterwards."

And of course in the opposite direction, nobody argues, "well, you had a good
reason for running that red light, so it's perfectly reasonable to run from
the police when they try to pull you over."

What you're really arguing is that leaks about a company's immoral behavior
don't cross the line where people have a right to defend themselves from
having their lives ruined. The reason GP disagrees with you isn't because they
don't understand that orderly societies require laws. It's because they think
it _does_ cross that line.

Personally, I trend towards agreeing with them. It is very easy to tell other
people that they should just buck up and accept unjust consequences as a
result of helping me. The reality is I (and society as a whole) benefit a lot
from whistleblowers. Given that whistleblowing is already a very dangerous
process, it's not clear to me why it's in my best interest to heap additional
social condemnation on top of that.

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adonovan
When I started working at Google 14 years ago its most striking feature was
the contrast between its external secrecy and its internal transparency.
Essentially all engineering information was accessible to all engineers.
Obviously the company has grown a lot since then, and there are numerous legal
constraints on its internal transparency (contracts, national laws, commercial
sensitivity, etc) but it is still has a culture of internal openness unusual
for a company of its size. Many rank-and-file employees, myself included,
would like to preserve that internal openness even though we may oppose recent
leadership decisions regarding Maven, China, and sexual harassment, or support
stronger government regulation of privacy. Hence employees' ambivalence about
leaking: it has helped shine a light on important issues, but it risks
important future decisions being made in secret.

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drewg123
One of the problems with leaks is that the natural management reaction to
leaks is to decrease the free flow of information within the company.

When I joined Google in early 2013 it seemed like there was a lot more
information and technical details shared at internal forums like TGIF than
there was by the time I left in mid 2015. In fact, we used to joke that the
internal go/stopleaks web page where people reported leaks was the new way to
find out what was happening in the company, since TGIF had become basically a
press release..

~~~
triplesec
Of course, this is classic authoritarian behaviour manipulation by the
management. Stop people doing the just and correct thing by punishing
everybody, so that the rank and file start to believe thatthe question of
leaking should be seen in terms of their own working conditions. And they
start to watch other people and turn against whistleblowing because it makes
their own lives less interesting at work. This makes for more peer-to-peer
surveillance in the interests of the authorities. The workers themselves start
to align themselves hegemonically with the authorities, quite possibly against
their and their society's interests.

~~~
gcc1993
My view on it it's Google has a vastly more open culture than any other place
I've worked and some leaks contribute to making the culture more open but on
the other hand there are people leaking pretty much everything and it's hard
to have candid internal discussions when literally everything is being leaked.
It's not like they all dislike leaks because management told them to, it
actually has practical affect on internal discourse that are bad for the
culture

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cpcallen
My impression is that it is not so much that management wants to stop leaks
(though I'm sure they do) as it is that the vast majority of rank-and-file
employees want the leaking to stop because past leaks have so very badly
damaged the previously-open culture of communication within the company.

The NYT should not be my main source of information about what is going on in
my workplace.

~~~
mannykannot
>The NYT should not be my main source of information about what is going on in
my workplace.

...and I assume your position is, by implication, that no-one outside of
Google has any business knowing what is going on inside it by any means, even
as it sucks up unprecedented levels of information about their own lives.

~~~
ryandvm
That's an excellent point. There's a delicious irony about the world's nosiest
company complaining about its privacy being violated.

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projectramo
I have never worked at Google but I have worked at several large firms. They
are without exception constituted by dozens or perhaps hundreds of tiny
fiefdoms. Within each fiefdom the senior most manager has their own policies,
culture and values.

If this is true of Google — which if you think about, has to be the case —
then I would read this as one particular manager got very worked up about
leakers.

~~~
new299
The article doesn’t really read like that to me. There’s a global “stopleaks”
email address to report leakers to, and leakers have been fired when reported.

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jimnotgym
An interesting shift.

'Don't be evil' becomes

'Don't let people know we are evil'

~~~
johan_larson
I think this is just Google growing up. When you're a smallish company with
little influence, what you say and who you talk to just don't matter. But when
you're a big company, with big responsibilities and a big footprint,
everything you say and do are closely watched, and therefore matter. You just
can't run a multi-billion dollar enterprise like a free&easy five-person
startup.

~~~
bsiemon
Isn't that a false dichotomy? Large organizations can have organizing
principles other than profit at all costs. The groups of people that comprise
these organizations just choose not to.

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grigjd3
I don't know of any employer I've ever had that would be ok with me sharing
strategic information. This sounds entirely normal to me.

~~~
reaperducer
_I don 't know of any employer I've ever had that would be ok with me sharing
strategic information._

Letting the press know of an upcoming product is a leak of strategic
information.

Letting the press know that your company aids government repression of basic
human rights is not a leak of strategic information.

------
new_here
Google obviously sees China as an important growth opportunity. Perhaps their
strategy is to launch a search service in China that is ‘compliant’ with local
regulations and they thought they could do that in a balanced way (e.g.
warning users upfront before searching) but now that the story is out of the
bag and they can’t control the narrative it’s tainted their approach and the
opportunity.

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deogeo
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear~

~~~
Fuckyourself
I hope to god that phrase comes back to bite you in the ass.

~~~
deogeo
I sympathize with the sentiment, but I was being sarcastic.

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darren_
Hello hackernews, what's going on here? I commented on a businessinsider*
story about this. It is now a times.co.uk story that a) I can't read in full
and b) is not the story I originally commented on.

I'm not particularly happy about having my comments attached to a different
article than the one I originally commented on, especially one I can't read.

* i wrote bloomberg here originally; it was actually businessinsider.com.au. i'd say i regret the error but i don't really

~~~
ethbro
@dang I know this isn't done often or without cause, and it certainly serves a
value.

But as we grow and the necessity of url subs increase... parent does have a
valid point. Particularly if changes are UI-invisible. Even a "[changed]" tag
suffix might help.

~~~
dang
We usually post a comment about it, but not all the moderators are in a
position to do that.

I understand the sentiment in favor, but am not inclined to add moderation
tags or widgets to HN's UI. Features like that add complexity, and take up
space that might otherwise go to more valuable features.

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darren_
Comment deleted as the URL linked changed after I wrote it.

~~~
arkades
Would you like to offer up your version of events? An anonymous person saying
"no, that's not accurate, in some ways, you don't need to know which," doesn't
... well, I don't know to extrapolate any meaning from that at all.

~~~
darren_
Deleted, see parent.

~~~
garethrees
The description must be sufficiently similar to something that did happen,
though, for you to be confident that you recognise the incident.

~~~
darren_
See parent.

~~~
na85
So what did happen then?

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vrazj
What exactly is odd or wrong about a company wanting to stop leaks?

Is Google the next target of the press, once they are done trashing Facebook?

~~~
ForHackernews
Google and Facebook are the two biggest violators of user privacy on the
internet. You call it "trashing", I call it long-overdue public scrutiny.

~~~
Applejinx
It's really not about simply violating privacy. It's about the actions one
takes after one violates all the privacy ever.

Big data is power. Facebook and Google know that. Everyone else had better
learn. These reactions telegraph that Google and Facebook have been eagerly
making use of the power they've gained, and it's obviously backfired… or, the
first things they've tried to do have been totally evil and reprehensible, and
successful.

~~~
ForHackernews
Part of the goal of the GDPR is to turn massive stores of user data from a
corporate asset into a legal liability. If we can get internet companies to
treat user data the way brick-and-mortar companies treat hazardous chemicals--
occasionally necessary for some industrial process, but best avoided where
possible, and always treated with respect--then that would be a big win for
society IMO.

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baxtr
I’m sure that there is someone at google working on an AI solution for this.
And I’m not even joking

------
tomohawk
The leak about the Google winge fest after the Trump victory is an interesting
data point.

On the one hand, the company claims not to be acting in a partisan way; on the
other hand this comes out.

[https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-
googl...](https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-
leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/)

The company continues to claim, despite the contents of the video giving an
appearance partisanship, that they are not biased in any way.

Then they launch the leak hunt.

If the video is no big deal, then why the big hunt and the paranoia?

Google is not just some private company out there - it is a large monopoly
with the power to sway elections. They need oversight.

