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> Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google today demanding the company hand over an internal memo based on which Google decided to cover up a Goog

> Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google today demanding the company hand over an internal memo based on which Google decided to cover up a Google+ data leak instead of going public as most companies do. That's a loaded first sentence. Here's another way of writing it: "Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google today asking the company to please provide internal memo based on which Google decided to not disclose a Google+ bug that could have leaked data instead of going public as very few companies would." Or break it up if that's too wordy. ZDNet and the writer of this article should be ashamed of themselves. How much more clearly can you out yourself as biased garbage? To the contents of the letter itself [0], just answer the 8 questions straight up, and give the memo. Doesn't appear like a witch hunt quite yet. On questions 3, 4, and 5 just make it clear that software bugs are rampant, many have the ability to get bad things when exploited, and on 6 either inundate them with a deluge of security bugs or explain that there are probably thousands. On #7, the answer better be an emphatic "yes" or I will be very disappointed. If it becomes more political, there needs to be legal requirements for disclosing all security vulns (instead of just exploited ones) or they need to recognize it's untenable to ask for them. Can't have it both ways and just pick a company's vuln because of an article about them and not ask other companies for theirs. 0 (PDF) - https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4852b311-0953-4ac8-ac43-a91dde229cc1/E300DA0C7659678AE0AE37AEB9746200.thune-wicker-moran-letter-to-google-10.11.18.pdf https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4852b311...

sololipsist 8y ago
> How much more clearly can you out yourself as biased garbage? Are you really surprised, or are you just pretending to be? This is par for the course for every major journalism outfit - from Fox to MSNBC down to NPR and PBS. There isn't a single major outlet, irrespective of funding model or platform, that isn't blatantly biased.
ccnafr 8y ago
> out yourself as biased garbage? Biased based on your opinion. I personally think this is a very big deal and I don't see anything wrong in that sentence. If you think Google is innocent, just look at the facts. 1) They had an internal memo discouraging public disclosure. 2) They only came clean with the leak after WSJ reached out for comment before the publication of a story. 3) They buried the "leak" announcement in a gigantic blog post. The blog post was meant to announce a new project, but about halfway through the middle they disclosed a data-leaking bug. I'd say the tone of the article is in response to Google's observed and recorded actions. Yeah, I'd say the article and letter's tone is just about right.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > I personally think this is a very big deal [...] Yeah, I'd say the article[...]'s tone is just about right. That an article needs a "tone", and that it's right/wrong based on how big of a deal the reader thinks it is, is the issue. I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. We could argue about fact selection/placement, but I'll take that over arguing a particular organization's collective side of the bed they wake up on. To your point, we disagree there wrt internal discussions of disclosure. What will be real scary is when there is a chilling effect to even performing rational discussion around these things. There is no such thing as disclose all, and when there is no such thing as talking about it either, you'll wish these rules were codified in law instead of applied selectively to issues you are ok with.
  - tyrust 8y ago
    >I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. Interesting that you mention this, I'm not convinced that this will be a silver bullet. A couple of concerns that come to mind: 1. Something must bridge the robot to the physical world. The selection of which facts to include and exclude in this data source can create bias. 2. From the data source, the robot then would make its own decision about to to present facts, presumably performing some filtration of its own. Such a robot can have bias [0]. To be clear, I definitely agree that robojournalism could be an improvement. But we can't forget how it works and how it could be manipulated. [0] - For example http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2017/how-to-make-a-racist-ai-without-really-trying/ http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2017/how-to-make-a-racist-ai...
  - michaelt 8y ago
    I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. I've got just the thing for you: cat news.txt | sed 's/\. /.\n * Reportedly, /'
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >Biased based on your opinion... All bias is based on opinion. It's possible for everyone making a comment, including you and I, to be biased. In fact, in any political argument the chances that a commenter is unbiased are vanishingly small. You have your bias. Kodablah has his/her own bias. There's nothing wrong with that. It certainly doesn't negate either of your arguments. Kodablah's point remains just as valid to consider.
crunchlibrarian 8y ago
It's funny how picky and particular HN gets over the wording or sources whenever the story is about Google. In nearly every article you see comments like this upvoted to the top within 10 minutes of posting. Any other topic or company: the wording or journalistic techniques are an unimportant aside, if they get mentioned at all.
- kodablah 8y ago
  No, I have consistently been against media-driven fervor against tech companies for a while now without regard to the company. It's how they build terrorists, druggies, communists, etc. I think you're confusing my comment with HN in general, or attempting to derive too much sentiment out of comment votes.
kurthr 8y ago
Anyone want to take bets that those senators are using OS/email systems that have security vulnerabilities bugs that will be fixed (announced or not) over the next 12 months? Do they have sufficient logging/security that they will be able to demonstrate that their communications were not compromised? I don't have confidence that their staff don't have direct access to their accounts, their passwords are remotely strong, or they have any real OpSec. Hopefully, they have been forced to use something resembling 2FA.

sololipsist 8y ago

> How much more clearly can you out yourself as biased garbage? Are you really surprised, or are you just pretending to be? This is par for the course for every major journalism outfit - from Fox to MSNBC down to NPR and PBS. There isn't a single major outlet, irrespective of funding model or platform, that isn't blatantly biased.

ccnafr 8y ago

> out yourself as biased garbage? Biased based on your opinion. I personally think this is a very big deal and I don't see anything wrong in that sentence. If you think Google is innocent, just look at the facts. 1) They had an internal memo discouraging public disclosure. 2) They only came clean with the leak after WSJ reached out for comment before the publication of a story. 3) They buried the "leak" announcement in a gigantic blog post. The blog post was meant to announce a new project, but about halfway through the middle they disclosed a data-leaking bug. I'd say the tone of the article is in response to Google's observed and recorded actions. Yeah, I'd say the article and letter's tone is just about right.

kodablah 8y ago
> I personally think this is a very big deal [...] Yeah, I'd say the article[...]'s tone is just about right. That an article needs a "tone", and that it's right/wrong based on how big of a deal the reader thinks it is, is the issue. I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. We could argue about fact selection/placement, but I'll take that over arguing a particular organization's collective side of the bed they wake up on. To your point, we disagree there wrt internal discussions of disclosure. What will be real scary is when there is a chilling effect to even performing rational discussion around these things. There is no such thing as disclose all, and when there is no such thing as talking about it either, you'll wish these rules were codified in law instead of applied selectively to issues you are ok with.
- tyrust 8y ago
  >I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. Interesting that you mention this, I'm not convinced that this will be a silver bullet. A couple of concerns that come to mind: 1. Something must bridge the robot to the physical world. The selection of which facts to include and exclude in this data source can create bias. 2. From the data source, the robot then would make its own decision about to to present facts, presumably performing some filtration of its own. Such a robot can have bias [0]. To be clear, I definitely agree that robojournalism could be an improvement. But we can't forget how it works and how it could be manipulated. [0] - For example http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2017/how-to-make-a-racist-ai-without-really-trying/ http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2017/how-to-make-a-racist-ai...
- michaelt 8y ago
  I await robot news that is a bulleted list of facts. I've got just the thing for you: cat news.txt | sed 's/\. /.\n * Reportedly, /'
bilbo0s 8y ago
>Biased based on your opinion... All bias is based on opinion. It's possible for everyone making a comment, including you and I, to be biased. In fact, in any political argument the chances that a commenter is unbiased are vanishingly small. You have your bias. Kodablah has his/her own bias. There's nothing wrong with that. It certainly doesn't negate either of your arguments. Kodablah's point remains just as valid to consider.

crunchlibrarian 8y ago

It's funny how picky and particular HN gets over the wording or sources whenever the story is about Google. In nearly every article you see comments like this upvoted to the top within 10 minutes of posting. Any other topic or company: the wording or journalistic techniques are an unimportant aside, if they get mentioned at all.

kodablah 8y ago
No, I have consistently been against media-driven fervor against tech companies for a while now without regard to the company. It's how they build terrorists, druggies, communists, etc. I think you're confusing my comment with HN in general, or attempting to derive too much sentiment out of comment votes.

kurthr 8y ago

Anyone want to take bets that those senators are using OS/email systems that have security vulnerabilities bugs that will be fixed (announced or not) over the next 12 months? Do they have sufficient logging/security that they will be able to demonstrate that their communications were not compromised? I don't have confidence that their staff don't have direct access to their accounts, their passwords are remotely strong, or they have any real OpSec. Hopefully, they have been forced to use something resembling 2FA.