Exclusive: Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA

originally posted by: netbound
I recall thinking back when the mind-bending revelations of Fast Eddie Snowden went viral, “This is news?” I couldn’t believe that everyone on the planet didn’t already know this stuff was going on. It always struck me how so many people voluntarily visited social networking sites, spilling their guts and opinions to absolute strangers, and used cloud services to store their data, and then were shocked and appauled that their “private” communications might be compromised. I mean, come on, gimme a break. Talk about naive.

It's not that we didn't know it was going on, it was very easy to extrapolate from the Bush spying program if nothing else. The difference is that Snowden provided documents. He gave us proof. A suspicion and proof are very different things. With proof there's a legal process to change it, in theory atleast.

I think with the world population at 7 billion,
the NSA can target certain individuals and not every tom, dick and harry

a reply to: R_Clark

Not surprising. Good catch.

F&S

Who here believes you actually have a choice not to co-operate once you get that knock on the door. there is no refusal due to the reality that you cannot operate at an international level without submission to TPTB once that submission is deemed required.
There is no choice. That is the whole point of control. You believe you have choice in the small things until you rise up and realize the more control you attain the less choice you retain.

the saddest part.. is that their surveillance is waaaaaay deeper that you think.

Its already too late...

So, it's been easy for me to follow the line-of-thinking that Google may have had evil intent all-along....that it had this master plan of data-mining/spying - and pulled the wool over our eyes as it carefully crafted a certain innocuous image and gained our trust. But the first posts of this thread seemed to hint at a different possibility - something that may have crossed my mind at some point, but I haven't spent much time considering because when you are dealing with a sinister reality such as this - you tend to think that the most sinister path was taken to achieve a sinister result. But, what if Google started out having honest, "noble" intentions - but at some point, needed/requested help from the highest levels of national security in order to ward off potential attackers? In exchange for that help, Big Bad Agency (NSA and/or others) proposed a deal: we keep you safe from the most skilled hackers - allowing you to protect your cash cow - and you become a portal for us to spy on whomever we want. We will even "endorse" you to such a degree that you will achieve a certain oligarchic status. The dynamic may be analogous to someone who seeks protection from a gang leader; that person may become beholden to the gang leader for certain things.

Obviously, the partnership is working splendidly; it's worked so well that people have wondered if Google is the NSA. At the very least, there seems to be a huge overlap between the two organizations. But how, exactly, did this overlap occur? To what extent did Google push for this NSA-like status? At some point, decisions were made that showed a sociopathic disregard for people's rights to privacy - but exactly when and how did this start happening?

a reply to: HalfAWorldAway

Ooh - so vague, so highly-suggestive. One of my peeves is when people leave droppings such as this and never come back to provide details. So, in what ways is this surveillance "waaaaaay deeper than you think"?