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Let's put Google's denial off to the side for one moment. The core of Arrington's accusation is broken: "The source had corresponded with me from a non Google
by fpgeek 13y ago
Let's put Google's denial off to the side for one moment. The core of Arrington's accusation is broken:
"The source had corresponded with me from a non Google email account, so the only way Google saw it was by accessing my Gmail account."
No, that's not the only way Google could have seen this email. It could easily have leaked via the non-Google email account: The employee could have (intentionally or accidentally) forwarded the email to their work account. Or they could have sent it or accessed it unencrypted from a Google internal network. They could have also sent the email to someone else who passed it on to Google. And so on.
Yes, these are all stupid mistakes that your careful, tech-savvy leaker shouldn't make, but people make mistakes like them all the time. And I wouldn't expect an inebriated leaker to make a point of mentioning whatever stupid mistake they might have made (if said leaker even realized where they went wrong).
- pavanky 13y ago> Or they could have sent it or accessed it unencrypted from a Google internal network. This is the most likely scenario. If you are using a shared network administered by someone other than you, you should assume nothing about privacy or secrecy.
- furyg3 13y agoI would find it very dubious if my own employer asserted that it was appropriate to read and act on an employee's private, non-work email because that employee accessed it from their network or device. If I were a Google employee I'd be pretty interested in getting answers as to how they acquired this information, and to advocate to change internal policies if this was the case. It also makes me think twice about ever working for an organization where I don't have root on the devices I use.
- ithkuil 13y agoWhat makes you think that Google employees don't have root on their devices? Are you talking about android specifically?
- skj 13y agoGoogle employees have root on their devices, unless it's a chromebook pixel for some reason. If you root that you can't use the corp network. Not sure why, since you have root on any other kind of laptop you might get from corp.
- brown9-2 13y agoHaving root on the device is irrelevant when the device uses a network that someone other than you controls. Just about every company in America will assert the right to do whatever they want with the traffic from any device you use on their network.
- xyzzyz 13y agoOr they could have sent it or accessed it unencrypted from a Google internal network. I have a relevant anecdote. When I was an intern at Facebook, during one of the university relations event that was of a "hackathon" genre, I was creating with my friends a multiplayer web game that was using websockets for communication. The guest wi-fi network wouldn't let packets between different machines connected to it go through, so we decided to just tunnel all traffic to my laptop (the game server) through AWS using ssh tunnel. It took only a few minutes for network security people to contact me, asking what's this big encrypted transfer to AWS all about, and mind you, it was Saturday evening.
- nl 13y agoI think the most likely scenario is that the employee leaked it to multiple people, and one of them forwarded it to Google. either intentionally of non intentionally.
- panarky 13y agoPrecisely. Arrington couldn't conceive of any other way Google could get the mail, so he's "nearly certain" that Google read his Gmail. Even assuming his drunken source was accurate and truthful, there are in fact many legitimate ways Google could have obtained the information. Arrington's accusation is just reckless and irresponsible.