
Newsrooms, let’s talk about G Suite - tysone
https://freedom.press/training/blog/newsrooms-lets-talk-about-gsuite/
======
joshuamorton
[I'm a googler, who works in Apps, but not directly on anything relevant
here].

This article mentions Access Transparency

> By default, G Suite Enterprise enables a feature called Access Transparency,
> which allows administrators to see who has looked at each document within
> the organization.

But gets it a bit wrong. Access Transparency is a log of any Google employees
who have looked at stuff in your domain. From the official site "Access
Transparency logs provide information about actions of Google staff when they
access your data."[1]. Which is a nice way of knowing that Google employees
aren't randomly snooping on your files.

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/a/answer/9230979?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/9230979?hl=en)

~~~
dwighttk
"Which is a nice way of knowing that Google employees aren't randomly snooping
on your files."

does it do that? Or does it just show you times that Google is willing to tell
you Google employees snooped on your files?

~~~
Zopieux
The generic answer to these concerns is usually the following: if a (well-
known, very scrutinized) company such as Google writes that kind of promise in
public documentation that is part of a binding contract with paying customers,
there is a good chance they won't purposefully break that agreement, and risk
being caught by an audit, just for the sake of accessing someone's personal
data.

~~~
yabot
That's great, but if it's only true until it isn't. The moments when that idea
is false (however rare) are the life altering, permanent moments that result
in irrevocable ruin for whomsoever might dare trust the promises and honor of
_[faceless corporation]_.

The truth is twofold.

One: if the barrier can be melted according to magic rules, then it is no real
barrier. It is a sweet candy coating that melts in your mouth, not in your
hands.

Two: if a corporation is made of many incidental strangers who happen to share
an employer for overlapping moments in time, and the system has at least one
authorization bypass, then so does the audit trail.

If you don't think corporations implode, suffer from disgruntled criminal
employees, sell out to rivals, go completely bankrupt, or land themselves in
jail, then bet all of your secrets on the idea that what they tell you is 100%
truth.

~~~
smueller1234
You know, we, working at Google, are people, right? We have moral and ethical
standards just like everyone else. Many (but not all) of us also aren't locked
in to Google and can find employment elsewhere easily but choose not to.

The following isn't about Google as such: Thing with a disgruntled criminal
employee is that they don't usually come in bunches and don't collude because
they can't easily identify each other. Which means they can't generally commit
such acts and then also corrupt a whole 'nother department to cover it up.

~~~
cyborgx7
Trusting your privacy on the moral and ethical compass of every individual at
giant corporations is incredibly foolish. If this is a wide-spread belief at
Google, it only further erodes my trust in the company.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
It's not _every_ employee, but rather something like _any_. As in: any
employee with access to user data can check that their actions are logged
correctly.

This doesn't protect against government action, and not at Google leadership
specifically targetting you. But it does prevent the (rather common) abuse of
such access by regular employees.

------
karambir
I believe we should also support more open-source software here. Google Docs
are in no doubt best and provide a lot of good functionality to its users.
Even Office(365?) is getting good. LibreOffice is developing an online
version[1] which is at alpha stage I would say.

I recently installed Collabora Online(a packaged version of LibreOffice
Online) on my Nextcloud server and it is working fine for basic document
editing. And with Nextcloud, I am also able to get comments and chat on the
side[2]. Maybe they can integrate this feature more into documents/files.

1\. [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-
online/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

2\. [https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-introduces-
collaborativ...](https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-introduces-
collaborative-rich-text-editor/)

~~~
lhoff
Have you tried OnlyOffice? Integrates with nextcloud as well. Licenced unter
AGPLv3 and works really good. I used Collabora before but i prefere
OnlyOffice.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice)

~~~
karambir
This is great. I looked at it previously but leaned towards LibreOffice for my
case. I will try it.

------
GauntletWizard
I used to be an SRE on Google Enterprise - I ran the Admin panel you see in
the article, and worked on Docs infrastructure.

I endorse this message. It's important that people understand how the
technology they use works. Yes, Google Docs are stored in a format legible to
the company. There were tool such that they could be included in legal holds
or subpoenas. There were no access tools that Google or Googlers could read
those documents directly, but they absolutely were included in legal discovery
tooling. You should be aware of that fact, just as you should be aware that
your enterprise can read (and include in response to subpoenas, etc) your
e-mail.

Since the article mentioned TOS Violations as a potential threat vector, I'll
also share an interesting anecdote: Journalists using Google Docs were one of
our worst headaches. It was not uncommon for journalists to put Google Docs
links, or internal links, into stories - It got used as an image sharing
service a lot. At one point, there was insufficient (read: No) caching on some
of the Google Spreadsheets "Graph" features... and the NY Times embedded an
image generated by such into their homepage. The mechanism that prevented that
from taking down all of google docs was the same one that prevents abuse.
Documents with poor sharing properties are likely to trigger anti-abuse
mechanisms, and get that TOS message in response. It's not personal, and quite
frankly - I'm in agreement with the message, because while not intentional, it
is abuse.

~~~
Someone
_”Yes, Google Docs are stored in a format legible to the company.”_

I would think that’s practically unavoidable if you want to support sharing of
files and, in particular, concurrent editing.

~~~
judge2020
It's definitely not impossible to make collaborative end-to-end encrypted
docs-like app, but it would add a lot of friction if you needed to be online,
and on a computer that already has view access, to approve giving access to
another person.

------
whalabi
Ok I'm a little distressed by this tweet the article linked:
[https://twitter.com/Rachael_Bale/status/925352538110595072](https://twitter.com/Rachael_Bale/status/925352538110595072)

~~~
chery
I rely on Google so much. One glitch in Google code can cost me a lot.

~~~
tantalor
You can hedge that risk with periodic backups.

~~~
blfr
You can even set periodic backups in Google Takeout now.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Yes but you can't set your own schedule and it's not incremental. On the
positive side, you can now directly export to OneDrive, DropBox or Box.

------
nillium
If there are any journalists/news directors/managers on this thread, Nillium
is building a system to manage reporting information/logistics for newsrooms.
Basically everything for a story up to the point its ready for a CMS. It will
provide way better organizing and archiving within individual organizations,
and across affiliated newsrooms.

We're still working through our security and encryption protocols, but would
love to hear from you what your concerns may be - from the incredibly
sensitive investigations to run of the mill police blotter stories.

I'd love to talk to you - jared AT nillium DOT com

------
lewisjoe
The market for end-to-end encrypted office suite is pretty immature. There're
products like Tresorit[1] and GraphiteDocs[2], but they are more like text
editors, than a full-featured word processor that newsrooms need.

One good google docs alternative is Zoho Writer
([https://zoho.com/writer](https://zoho.com/writer)). Zoho doesn't do funny
business scanning content for Ads. You pay and you use the software, that's
all (Source: I work @ Zoho). Even better, Zoho offers APIs to use just the
editors, while allowing companies to retain their data within their own cloud
-
[https://www.zoho.com/officeplatform/integrator/](https://www.zoho.com/officeplatform/integrator/)

For full protection, even against legal government requests, we might have to
look at self-hosted solutions, which are again not very mature to call
themselves a viable Google Docs alternative.

[1] [https://tresorit.com](https://tresorit.com) [2]
[https://www.graphitedocs.com](https://www.graphitedocs.com)

~~~
jasonvorhe
This is pure advertising for a competing product. G-Suite doesn't do any
scanning for advertising either.

~~~
lewisjoe
Thanks. Never knew this. But the fact something like this -
[https://www.zoho.com/officeplatform/integrator/](https://www.zoho.com/officeplatform/integrator/)
exists is useful information. So I wouldn't rule it out as "pure advertising".

------
aVx1uyD5pYWW
>For a fun example, administrators have the choice to keep draft copies of
emails, even after the email is removed from the draft folder. These drafts
can even be ported into Vault minute by minute. In other words, administrators
have the ability to read your draft emails live, or replay them after the
fact.

wow.

~~~
Nextgrid
I wonder why Google would develop tools to enable such creepy behaviour?

~~~
kelnos
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I struggle to think of a legitimate
business use for that kind of thing.

------
noodlesUK
I’m sure lots of people reading HN know of plenty of providers for email etc
that are not related to google, but what about all the other services? What
are alternatives to things like google docs? SMB shares and suchlike can work
as a replacement for google drive, but I don’t know of anyone (other than
keybase) who has a strong security model for anything like that.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I use Sandstorm.io with Etherpad, EtherCalc, and Wekan. It doesn't get a lot
of active development right now but it's security model is pretty solid.

~~~
jeffk_teh_haxor
Self-hosted, I'm assuming? Their hosted service is shutting down.
[https://sandstorm.io/news/](https://sandstorm.io/news/)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I'm actually currently on that hosted service, but will be finding time to
migrate soon!

------
craze3
I urge you guys to checkout some of the decentralized alternatives that are
built on Ethereum or Lightning network. Here are some decentralized apps from
Blockstack's App Mining program that have been gaining a lot of traction
lately:

\- Dmail (Gmail alternative):
[https://www.dmail.online/](https://www.dmail.online/)

\- Recall (Google Photos alternative):
[https://app.recall.photos/](https://app.recall.photos/)

\- Arcane Office (Google Docs/Office alternative):
[https://docs.arcaneoffice.com/](https://docs.arcaneoffice.com/)

\- Forms.id (Google Forms alternative): [https://forms.id/](https://forms.id/)

\- Arcane Maps (Google Maps alternative):
[https://arcanemaps.com/](https://arcanemaps.com/)

------
fouric
The biggest issue that I see here is journalists getting locked out of their
accounts, on claim of violating the TOS, with no explanation given, and likely
no human in the review process. If true, then this is bad enough that I would
suggest that _nobody_ ever use Gsuite ever again, not just journalists.

------
m0zg
It's not just Google you need to be worried about. Your data could easily be
subject to a government surveillance request, which Google not only can't turn
down, but can't even notify you if it's ongoing.

Regular run off the mill Google employee (even one working on G Suite) can't
see anything of course. But I have no doubt there is a small group of Google
employees who can see whatever the hell Google wants to see.

That said I don't quite get what the motivation would be, unless the reporting
in question could be of material consequence to Google.

I think US government is a far more worrisome attack vector.

------
adfm
Keep it simple. Use Markdown and encryption. Cryptomator.org works well across
most platforms. Editorial staff can track track changes with CriticMarkup.

------
alexcason
Shameless plug for Filewatch ([https://filewatch.net](https://filewatch.net)),
a client-side web application I made which enables you to see who your Google
Drive files and folders are shared with.

Filewatch doesn't get any information about you or your files, no information
about your files leaves your browser.

~~~
rnai
Hi Alex,

I just tried your tool. Pretty nice.

I think it would be helpful to add a filter: \- only files with other users

(Include any 'anyone with the link' files in the above)

Thanks for sharing your tool on HN.

------
ridaj
I believe a newsroom located in the US can just as well be compelled by a
court of law to hand over information on systems that it controls. Regardless
of where the data is stored physically or whether it's self-hosted.

------
loteck
Newsrooms, let's also talk about threat models, and which of these G Suite
concerns apply to your actual threats.

------
GrumpyNl
Why are google employees snooping on my files in the firstplace?

~~~
funkjunky
Because you reached out to them for support and you want to make sure they're
only looking at what they're supposed to

------
sixtypoundhound
Doesn't this sound like a really good reason to work with a smaller private
provider?

Don't do sensitive work on free services...

~~~
Klonoar
G Suite isn't free.

~~~
rootw0rm
My business got grandfathered into G Suite for free since I used it from beta.

------
ucaetano
Wow, that's a surprisingly fair and neutral write up, really good work!

------
Jonnyelm87
I urge you guys to checkout some of the decentralized alternatives that are
built on Ethereum or Lightning network. Here are some decentralized apps from
Blockstack's App Mining program that have been gaining a lot of traction
lately: \- Dmail (Gmail alternative):
[https://www.dmail.online/](https://www.dmail.online/)

\- Recall (Google Photos alternative):
[https://app.recall.photos/](https://app.recall.photos/)

\- Arcane Office (Google Docs/Office alternative):
[https://docs.arcaneoffice.com/](https://docs.arcaneoffice.com/)

\- Forms.id (Google Forms alternative): [https://forms.id/](https://forms.id/)

\- Arcane Maps (Google Maps alternative):
[https://arcanemaps.com/](https://arcanemaps.com/)

~~~
snowl
Exact same comment as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209462)
?

