
Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now? - r0h1n
http://thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now/
======
nl
For those who aren't aware, this essay isn't really about Google's co-
operation (or not) with the NSA regarding wiretaps.

This is about potential Google involvement in political activities outside the
US, where Assange claims it is acting as a proxy rather than requiring direct
US intelligence involvement. While Assange didn't name them, some specific
instances of what he is talking about are the "Color revolutions" in Eastern
Europe and the Arab Spring.

While this seems preposterous on the surface there is enough evidence to make
it worth considering. The Georgian "color revolution" obtained significant
funds from a body funded by George Soros[1], so private involvement isn't
unprecedented.

It is also well known that Wael Ghonim (who was instrumental in fueling the
Egyptian revolution) was employed by Google at the time[2] although he was
acting in a private capacity.

OTOH, it isn't at all clear is the US intelligence complex would have wanted
the Egyptian revolution to occur at all, and Assange doesn't go deep enough to
explain that.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution#Soros_foundat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution#Soros_foundation_and_U.S._influence)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Ghonim](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Ghonim)

------
guelo
It is creepy how Google Idea's projects all seem to be military type projects.
It gives the impression that Google is actively using its social graph to do
police work.

[http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/](http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/)

~~~
ender7
While "Google Ideas" makes it sound like a random VC fund or corporate "vision
& innovation" wankery, according to that website:

 _Google Ideas is a think /do tank that explores how technology can enable
people to confront threats in the face of conflict, instability or
repression._

Their list of projects makes much more sense in that light.

~~~
coldtea
Or, you know: "is a think/do tank that explores how technology can enable
repression."

~~~
psbp
In America, repression is freedom.

~~~
INTPenis
And don't we have relative freedom? We are all free to sit and read news on a
website instead of working 6-7 day weeks to support our families.

In a sense you can understand the perspectives of some western governments,
because they think that we are better off than under-developed nations. And as
long as they think that I believe two things will continue to happen. The
hegemony will prevail, and its denizes will remain apathetic to its off shore
actions.

~~~
coldtea
> _We are all free to sit and read news on a website instead of working 6-7
> day weeks to support our families._

Speak for yourself. Most people would be out of their homes pronto is they
didn't work 6-7 day weeks -- and tons of them already are on the streets or
trailers...

~~~
BrandonMarc
Yep. Keep the people worried about their own homes, and they'll have little
time, energy, or brainpower to worry about larger problems.

------
devx
I missed this article at the time by Bruce Schneier and I think a lot more
did, too, or didn't pay much attention to it, but according to him, Google
already gave NSA a backdoor into Gmail, which is what the Chinese hackers used
to hack them then:

[http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.ha...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html)

~~~
cromwellian
That is not an NSA backdoor and I'm shocked Schneier could make such a
mistake, it is a system to comply with FBI/local police court orders. The
Chinese hackers couldn't run queries on gmail accounts, all they got access to
was archives of court ordered material that had already been copied into the
system, see here: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4349236/chinese-hacker-
gma...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4349236/chinese-hacker-gmail-breach-
exposed-thousands-of-court-orders)

Basically, when a company needs to hand over data, they copy it and put it
somewhere for law enforcement to pick up, and apparently the Chinese hackers
got access to the drop box.

"Backdoor" makes it sound like Google built a query page that allows the NSA
to enter in an arbitrary account name and just get the data -- on anyone.

~~~
jacquesm
> "Backdoor" makes it sound like Google built a query page that allows the NSA
> to enter in an arbitrary account name and just get the data -- on anyone.

Now there's an idea. Now let's hope it's an original thought and nobody has
had that idea before you.

------
bowlofpetunias
On a positive note: Google's massive lobbying effort to undermine EU privacy
protections can now be considered dead in the water.

------
hitchhiker999
Most people love Google, they offer useful services. I think they'll be one of
the bigger 'disappointments' in this whole scene as it fully unravels. The
entire system needs to be decentralised, and quickly.

~~~
psbp
It's going to be a herculean effort to simulate google's (and other's)
services fast enough to attract loyal users. All these big tech companies'
services are extremely valuable and it's hard to convince the general consumer
to forfeit convenience for the sake of security, but I guess that was the idea
all along. We might as well start now.

~~~
perlpimp
I think companies can sponsor community projects just the way Apache was
sponsored. Replacement for online email, documents and other services - in
software. The ones that people can run on their own.

I think it is not a pipe dream. Some social and organizing groundwork needs to
be done. :)

~~~
Amadou
_I think companies can sponsor community projects just the way Apache was
sponsored._

Apache provided value to its corporate sponsors. Free software that you run on
your system, like your phone, doesn't put money in the pockets of any
corporations, except possibly the cell carriers who have not been at all
ashamed of their cosy relationship with the NSA.

------
cageface
I'm still willing to be convinced that Google has some kind of special,
voluntary co-operation policy with the NSA but this article doesn't seem to
offer much proof of such a thing. It seems to consist mostly of accusations of
guilt by association and the questionable inference that Google having a large
lobbying budget is indicative of being in government's pocket somehow.

~~~
JanezStupar
Historically realipolitik works on a quid pro quo basis. If government does
something for you, then you are expected to do something for the government.

Trading favors is the name of the game. One may argue that lobiying dollars
are the favor Google is offering. But one may not realize that dollars are
merely the cost of a ticket to participate. It is not the sole price.

There are many examples throughout history that this is the way things work.
There are two possibilities. Either Google's and governments relationship
works the way Assange has described OR US governments in the last fifteen
years are completely different (more honorable?) than all the governments
throughout the world before that.

What do you think is more probable?

~~~
cageface
What is it exactly that the U.S. government has done for Google?

The way things typically work here is that you hire a bunch of lobbyists and
put money in the pockets of various government officials in exchange for
favors. So the quid is generally just $$$.

~~~
JanezStupar
Listen, you think I know exactly how the deals are structured?

But from the tone of your post it would appear that you have participated in
these deals yourself. So tell me are you a lobbyist, someone who hired a
lobbyist or a government official?

Oh, you are no different than me - you have no data beyond your faith.

~~~
cageface
I'm not the one making bold accusations here. The burden of proof is not on
me.

~~~
WayneDB
On what planet do big business and government NOT intersect?

Saying otherwise is a bold claim.

------
vignesh_vs_in
All i can view is,

Your access to this site has been limited

Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in
a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503)

Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security
reasons

Important note for site admins: If you are the administrator of this website
note that your access has been limited because you broke one of the Wordfence
firewall rules. The reason you access was limited is: "Access from your area
has been temporarily limited for security reasons".

Did they block an entire country?

~~~
zerohp
It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US
tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance
with the PRISM mass surveillance system.

So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a
meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me
with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that
coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were
secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling
for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that
would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we
found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full
transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.

The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book,
a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than
enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late
May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication
endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael
Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry
Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the
acknowledgements.

Schmidt’s book is not about communicating with the public. He is worth $6.1
billion and does not need to sell books. Rather, this book is a mechanism by
which Google seeks to project itself into Washington. It shows Washington that
Google can be its partner, its geopolitical visionary, who will help
Washington see further about America’s interests. And by tying itself to the
US state, Google thereby cements its own security, at the expense of all
competitors.

Two months after my meeting with Eric Schmidt, WikiLeaks had a legal reason to
call Hilary Clinton and to document that we were calling her. It’s interesting
that if you call the front desk of the State Department and ask for Hillary
Clinton, you can actually get pretty close, and we’ve become quite good at
this. Anyone who has seen Doctor Strangelove may remember the fantastic scene
when Peter Sellers calls the White House from a payphone on the army base and
is put on hold as his call gradually moves through the levels. Well WikiLeaks
journalist Sarah Harrison, pretending to be my PA, put through our call to the
State Department, and like Peter Sellers we started moving through the levels,
and eventually we got up to Hillary Clinton’s senior legal advisor, who said
that we would be called back.

Shortly afterwards another one of our people, WikiLeaks’ ambassador Joseph
Farrell, received a call back, not from the State Department, but from Lisa
Shields, the then girlfriend of Eric Schmidt, who does not formally work for
the US State Department. So let’s reprise this situation: The Chairman of
Google’s girlfriend was being used as a back channel for Hillary Clinton. This
is illustrative. It shows that at this level of US society, as in other
corporate states, it is all musical chairs.

That visit from Google while I was under house arrest was, as it turns out, an
unofficial visit from the State Department. Just consider the people who
accompanied Schmidt on that visit: his girlfriend Lisa Shields, Vice President
for Communications at the CFR; Scott Malcolmson, former senior State
Department advisor; and Jared Cohen, advisor to both Hillary Clinton and
Condoleezza Rice, a kind of Generation Y Kissinger figure — a noisy Quiet
American as the author Graham Greene might have put it.

Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San
Francisco’s Bay Area. But as Google grew it encountered the big bad world. It
encountered barriers to its expansion in the form of complex political
networks and foreign regulations. So it started doing what big bad American
companies do, from Coca Cola to Northrop Grumman. It started leaning heavily
on the State Department for support, and by doing so it entered into the
Washington DC system. A recently released statistic shows that Google now
spends even more money than Lockheed Martin on paid lobbyists in Washington.

Jared Cohen was the co-writer of Eric Schmidt’s book, and his role as the
bridge between Google and the State Department speaks volumes about how the US
securitocracy works. Cohen used to work directly for the State Department and
was a close advisor to both Condolezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. But since
2010 he has been Director of Google Ideas, its in-house ‘think/do’ tank.

Documents published last year by WikiLeaks obtained from the US intelligence
contractor Stratfor, show that in 2011 Jared Cohen, then (as he is now)
Director of Google Ideas, was off running secret missions to the edge of Iran
in Azerbaijan. In these internal emails, Fred Burton, Stratfor’s Vice
President for Intelligence and a former senior State Department official,
describes Google as follows:

“Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In
reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do…[Cohen] is going to get
himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose
Google’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then
disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag”

In further internal communication, Burton subsequently clarifies his sources
on Cohen’s activities as Marty Lev, Google’s director of security and safety
and.. Eric Schmidt.

WikiLeaks cables also reveal that previously Cohen, when working for the State
Department, was in Afghanistan trying to convince the four major Afghan mobile
phone companies to move their antennas onto US military bases. In Lebanon he
covertly worked to establish, on behalf of the State Department, an anti-
Hezbollah Shia think tank. And in London? He was offering Bollywood film
executives funds to insert anti-extremist content into Bollywood films and
promising to connect them to related networks in Hollywood. That is the
Director of Google Ideas. Cohen is effectively Google’s director of regime
change. He is the State Department channeling Silicon Valley.

That Google was taking NSA money in exchange for handing over people’s data
comes as no surprise. When Google encountered the big bad world, Google itself
got big and bad.

~~~
greenyoda
Missing piece of context: the author of the above quoted article is Julian
Assange.

~~~
adamnemecek
Yeah, I did not realize that until I got to the house arrest part. The
author's name could have been more prominently displayed.

------
abalone
I don't know about these new accusations about a Google employee doing covert
work for the State Dept., but as far as them getting reimbursed for compliance
costs, I don't really see that as scandalous.

The Guardian strongly implies that this contradicts their earlier denials
about knowing anything about PRISM. But PRISM could just be the NSA's internal
name for the program that collects data obtained from companies via court
order. From the companies' perspective, they're just complying with court
orders. Theres nothing in the Guardian's reporting that contradicts that, at
least as far as I can see.

Assange's implication that getting reimbursed for court costs is some sort of
business model for Google ("taking NSA money in exchange for handing over
people's data") is absurd. They take advertisers' money for handing over
people's data, not the government's.

Guardian's report: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-
costs...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-
companies-paid)

~~~
cromwellian
The guardian is really letting me down with the sheer amount of sensationalist
reporting going on. They hit the jackpot with Snowden, but they keep trying to
milk it and stretch the story out. Quoting the Gmail class action court
filings incorrectly and putting words in Google's mouth was a low point.

~~~
cromwellian
Downvoted for truth eh?
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-
gma...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-
privacy-email-lawsuit)

Guardian had to publish a correction. They also mindlessly copied the press
release from Consumer Watchdog and tried to connect the subject to PRISM,
which it has nothing to do with (this is about automated Gmail ads).

"Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the
revelation a "stunning admission." It comes as Google and its peers are under
pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass
surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals."

However, the Consumer Watchdog responsible for the misleading press release is
not an advocacy group (there are two of them), it is actually an astroturfer
with a heavily anti-Google bias, most likely funded by Microsoft out of a
range of such organizations MS runs:
[http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/28/microsofts-secret-
scr...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/28/microsofts-secret-screw-google-
meetings-in-d-c/) And some evidence here:
[http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-
exposed/](http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/)

Point is, the Guardian make a factual error, and at the same time, copy-
pasta'ed an astroturfer.

~~~
tzs
Your Daily Finance link contains nothing that supports your claim.

Your second link in that paragraph is to a conspiracy site that basically
declares anyone who ever is on the same side as Microsoft on any issue to be a
Microsoft astroturfer or to have been infiltrated by Microsoft. Among things
they claim are under the control of Microsoft: NPR, the Department of
Education, the White House, the French government, all major newspapers,
Amazon, Yahoo. The page you linked to is up to their usual standards--they
base their argument on a Google search showing the CW has criticized Google
more than it has criticized Microsoft, and on CW hosting its site on a hosting
service that is part of a company that provides services for managing and
contacting people.

It's probably best to start with more mainstream sites when researching
something, such as the Wikipedia entry for the thing you are researching [1],
rather than heading right to the conspiracy sites like Boycott Novell.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog)

~~~
cromwellian
I always head to Wikipedia first, but Wikipedia does not always have the
complete story. Wikipedia has nothing on FairSearch, and the evidence is
pretty solid that Microsoft is behind this group. Nor did it say anything
about Florian Mueller being on the dole from Oracle or Microsoft until
recently (check the Wikipedia history of his page) when he admitted even, even
when we knew for years that this was in fact the case given the sheer volume
of articles he writes attacking only Microsoft and Oracle's competitors.

Consumer Watchdog isn't just critical of Google, they are rabidly so to a
deranged order. They've got an entire site,
[http://insidegoogle.com/](http://insidegoogle.com/) dedicated to nothing but
100% Google attacks.

This is the smoking gun modus operandi of astroturf. Does other consumer
groups, like Consumers Union/Reports, or Center for Science In the Public
Interest maintain sites _exclusively dedicated to attacking a single company_?
They claim their issue is privacy, but if you look on their sight, they attack
Google pretty much on everything, for example, they side against consumers and
with publishers on Google Books.

Whatever other projects they've got going, it smells fishy. It smells like
astroturf.

------
logn
For those who haven't read them, these posts by Steve Blank bring this all
into focus. Spend a couple hours and read this: [http://steveblank.com/secret-
history/](http://steveblank.com/secret-history/) and then this
[http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-
val...](http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-valley/) .
History is fascinating when told by a good historian.

------
psbp
So who from google is going to try to assuage our concerns and tell us that
it's all misdirection that they, and thus we, shouldn't fall prey to? Or is
anyone from the company not compromised by a candy-coated exterior?

------
spinchange
Schmidt personally seems to have political-power aspirations and has been
practically transparent about using the chairmanship of Google to that end for
himself and as a proxy for the company.

The motivation for all this freelance diplomacy doesn't even need to be for
specific favors - it can be to raise his and Google's stature with the world's
political power machinery.

Consider that, while it doesn't make it any less troubling, they might even
have good intentions in what they're doing. I'm not trying to be an apologist
for it, just thinking about what would motivate a company like Google -or
rather, people at the top- to do stuff like this.

------
tn13
Absolutely nothing surprising. Any company can be bullied and all companies
have good incentive to crawl when government asks to bend.

~~~
jacquesm
Google has been crawling since their inception.

~~~
tn13
Thats a good one.

------
mladenkovacevic
I like to analyze potential motives that the elites might have for doing
whatever it is they do:

Industrial sector elite: control of resources

Intelligence elite: control over people

Google elite: I don't know if they know yet but they are probably trying to
find their place in the future. Maybe control of data?

Either way you can see how they all might be able to help each other out.

------
einhverfr
Reading this article, one could be pardoned for wondering if Cohen is a NOC
agent for some intelligence agency....

------
cromwellian
Google doesn't need the paltry revenue from the NSA for their bottom line,
Assange plays guilt by association, but doesn't address motives.

I have no doubt that Google is trying to stay on Congress's good side, after
all, Microsoft funded an array of lobbyist organizations trying to get the
government to shakedown Google, and their increase in lobbying spending is no
doubt a response. It's pretty clear how this game works with regulatory
capture, Congress threatens to regulate your business, you in turn, are forced
to donate to their re-election campaign for 'protection'.

Less clear is whether playing nice with the State Department buys you
anything. Assange makes it sound like Chomsky's conspiracy theories over
pipelines, that Google has fruit plantations or oil pipelines abroad that need
State Department protection, and somehow the State Department has some quid
pro quo. But what can the State Department actually offer Google? They have no
control over some of Google's biggest foreign issues: Chinese and Russian
markets, foreign taxes. At best, the executive branch could back off
investigations or approve mergers. But the evidence is mixed. Obama just
veto'ed the Samsung ban on Apple, but allowed Apple's ITC ban on some Motorola
devices to continue.

And what to make of the Cohen thing. So, Google is supposedly being contracted
by the State Department or CIA to cause foreign uprisings now? Isn't it far
more likely that the social, economic, and culture conditions that are fueling
these uprisings have been boiling for years and that Google had little to do
with them? Google, Facebook, and Twitter basically want users, and to promote
digital media, and these uprisings which heavily used their services actually
was good PR for social media overall.

I dislike the way many people analyze the motivations of those in other
nations so as to remove local agency. Those same people will tell you, how
dare you, look down on people in these countries, at the same time, viewing
all local politics and local agendas as really being driven by the plans of
external actors.

If Cohen was meeting with people in Iran and Azerbaijan, why does it have to
be for some ominous CIA purpose. Couldn't it have been for existing projects
Google Ideas already had? Google has been going all over the developing world
evangelizing use of things like Google Maps for tracking local issues, like
human, gun, or drug trafficking, environmental degradation, or even vanishing
languages. Cohen's previous job would have given him the right contacts to
make foreign connections in foreign governments, and is the perfect reason why
Silicon Valley companies would hire people from the State Department who have
foreign service experience. How many MBA grads working in Silicon Valley
actually have any experience navigating say, foreign government officials in
Kenya? For the same reason, the government hires Silicon Valley workers to
work on government IT projects, because you go where the experience is. (e.g.
data.gov)

None of this disproves anything, but I find the dots being connected here to
be very tenuous.

~~~
brisance
You mean you didn't find it odd that Eric Schmidt traveled to North Korea?

~~~
cromwellian
Did you find it odd when Vice Media took Dennis Rodman and the Harlem
GlobeTrotters to NK?

Eric Schmidt has been traveling around the globe lately as he was researching
for his book, he also went to Burma and a few other places. I'm not really
sure what the claims are supposed to be, what was he going to do in NK that
the State Department couldn't do themselves? Spy? Negotiate nuclear arms?

When Tom Friedman travels to say, Sri Lanka, is it on behalf of the CIA, or
because he wants to write another sappy book on globalization?

Sometimes things are much more mundane. Vice media actually got to meet NK
leadership (dinner with Kim Jong Un), but they were really just looking to do
gonzo journalism -- even if they were debriefed by the government when they
returned.

------
depa
Mirror: [http://thestringer.com.au.nyud.net/google-and-the-nsa-
whos-h...](http://thestringer.com.au.nyud.net/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-
the-shit-bag-now/#.UhjdKhKJB-M)

------
yuhong
Wrote this on the topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078124)

------
_sabe_
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a
merger of state and corporate power." \- Benito Mussolini

~~~
rhizome
That was 70+ years ago, political structures have become more sophisticated
than that trite quote since then. It's like saying a computer is a machine
that reads floppy disks.

~~~
mmariani
Even though computers evolved by great leaps in the past few decades I argue
that the human nature has been somewhat stagnated for at least a couple
thousand years.

In that light, Mussolini's quote is as precise today as it was back in the day
it was first said. Sad, yet true.

~~~
Amadou
_In that light, Mussolini 's quote is as precise today as it was back in the
day it was first said._

It also appears to be a false attribution and is basically unsourced. It does
have a certain glibness to it that makes it suspicious.

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=280606](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=280606)

------
selfexperiments
Ever met someone who gives a great first impression and says all the right
words but later betrays your trust? I've mostly had the experience with
politicians, but Google is in a position to really _hurt_ people.

People need to get as far away from Google as possible. I think they're going
to show a nasty side to their personality soon.

------
anxiousest
None of it is convincing.

There is nothing extraordinary about the government showing interest when even
a private citizen is contacting and meeting to interview someone who is wanted
by said government on national security grounds.

Google's increased lobbying was dues to their big antirust battle a short
while back, these tend to be expensive. Besides this is American and lobbying
is a way of life here.

I'm not sure what Cohen was doing in Azerbaijan but is it really strange that
he was getting support in a potentially hostile territory.

As for what ostensibly triggered this post, the "revelations" that firms get
reimbursed for their troubles enabling surveillance, it's not new, nor is it a
money making endeavor, it's basically the only concession by the government
made in these wiretap laws, if they are to inconvenience entities with their
surveillance they will at least have to pay for it
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/nsa-said-to-have-
paid-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/nsa-said-to-have-paid-e-mail-
providers-millions-to-cover-costs-from-court-ruling.html) Also some targeted
surveillance might be necessary the problem is with the dragnet sort, and
these revelations don't make a distinction between the two which doesn't
automatically mean that it's the worst case scenario.

Assange might not have been pleased with his interview with Schmidt but
suggesting that Google started the Arab spring is absurd.

------
engrenage
It sounds as if wikileaks has evidence. If they do, they should show it,
although I guess it makes sense for them to set the context first so it isn't
so easily ignored.

There seem to be a lot of people here determined to argue that google is
innocent based on innuendo.

~~~
jlgaddis
Perhaps they've decided to go about it the way The Guardian did: make some
outrageous accusations and back them up with just a bit of proof, let the
accused come out and publicly deny the accusations, then publicize the proof
that shows that a) you were right, and b) the accused was straight up lying in
their denial.

~~~
engrenage
I strongly hope so.

