Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 27, 2021 0:25 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (6 responses)

The story mentioned Western intelligence agencies. I assumed we were all on the same page there.

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 27, 2021 10:45 UTC (Sat) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

How do we draw the line? I see Russia as quite western society, therefore russian intelligence agencies should be "western".
The opposition would be Eastern agencies. Countries like China, Korea, India, maybe Israel, Pakistan, Vietnam…

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 27, 2021 11:33 UTC (Sat) by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074) [Link] (4 responses)

> The story mentioned Western intelligence agencies. I assumed we were all on
> the same page there.

Well yes, but as someone who is not US citizen, I basically do not have *any*
legal protection from US spying. So for me personally, it does not really
matter. All of Russia, USA and China are and should be considered enemies for
regular person who want to keep his privacy.

So either google is a independent company that should protect its users, or
a partner to US security agencies and in that case should be treated as possible
attack vector.

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 27, 2021 16:11 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> or a partner to US security agencies and in that case should be treated as possible
attack vector.

EXACTLY.

And as a non-American, even though the Americans are our "friends", I very much consider them a loose cannon ...

Cheers,
Wol

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 28, 2021 18:13 UTC (Sun) by ermo (subscriber, #86690) [Link] (2 responses)

Any state-sponsored actor with licence to act indiscriminately and unilaterally in covert operations is to be considered a "loose cannon" as you put it.

In terms of behaviour, the only difference between criminal operations and state-sponsored actors seems to be the thin veneer of government control of the latter.

And even then, recent history shows that government only really cares when it involves its own citizens (and if the stakes are high enough, maybe not even then). Non-citizens are always fair game insofar as the ends appear to justify the means.

In any case, history clearly shows that "Friends" and "Allies" are both nebulous concepts when it comes to nation states and their intelligence agencies.

All of the above is my roundabout way of suggesting that security flaws should be fixed, no matter who exploits them. As a corollary, encryption/security should obviously not be weakened to support intelligence operations, since they're just as likely to exploited by enterprising criminal operations.

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 28, 2021 19:29 UTC (Sun) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

> All of the above is my roundabout way of suggesting that security flaws should be fixed, no matter who exploits them. As a corollary, encryption/security should obviously not be weakened to support intelligence operations, since they're just as likely to exploited by enterprising criminal operations.

And intelligence operations and criminals are often tightly tied together. Need some off the books money? Criminals. Fake ID? Criminals. A little quid-pro-quo and your "warrants only intelligence loophole" becomes an organized crime loophole.

Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation(Technology Review)

Posted Mar 29, 2021 19:40 UTC (Mon) by rmayr (subscriber, #16880) [Link]

Yup, Austria is well known to be an active target of US intelligence agencies, not only because Vienna hosts one UNO site. We have exactly zero legal protection against such actions, and I am pretty sure the agents have no ethical or moral qualms about attacking any other EU citizen either. Yes, sometimes their actions may mean a net good for the global society, but many other times they may not. So please forgive me about not seeing the point of giving such agencies a break by not fixing open security vulnerabilities they are actively abusing. Everybody has a right to security.