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Hideous new PowerPoint slide reveals NSA intrusion into Google security

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Google engineers broke into profanity when they saw slide.

The latest revelation from Edward Snowden is so shocking that it caused Google engineers to "explode into profanity." Yet another program apparently intercepts data from Google, without their knowledge and deposits it in the gaping maw of the NSA.

Highlights

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
11/1/2013 (1 decade ago)

Published in Politics & Policy

Keywords: Google, NSA, spying, Snowden, slides, power point, Yahoo, MUSCULAR

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Washington Post published a sketch taken from the notoriously terrible, top secret NSA Power Point presentation that summarizes their data collection activity. Of course, the NSA's specialty is spying, not Power Point.

That spying apparently included bypassing Google's security measures. The effort was apparently so successful that it caused two Google engineers that viewed the slide to "explode into profanity" according to the Post.

Google released a statement saying they "are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform."

"We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems," the Google statement ads.

The NSA's director, General Keith Alexander has confessed that the NSA has access to Google and Yahoo databases, but added that "we go through a court order."

That court is a secret court, which does not answer to the American people, making it a virtual rubber-stamp for the prying organization.

The program is known by the acronym MUSCULAR, and according to apologetics from the NSA, it does not collect "vast quantities" of data on Americans.

This shouldn't matter. A single byte of data collected from an American is too much.

Also revealed is that the MUSCULAR program is operated jointly by the British intelligence service, GCHQ. Allegedly, an unnamed communications provider has tapped into a Google cable network that allows unencrypted data to pass swiftly between Google and Yahoo.

According to the Post, millions of records shared between Google and Yahoo are sent to data collection facilities every day. Entire transmissions of data that are sent on fiber optic cables between the two tech firms are being intercepted and stored by the NSA.

The White House has declined to comment.

The revelation sets tech firms such as Google back on its heels because the firm has recently emphasized security to its customers. Now, with surreptitious government surveillance going on across networks, confidence in the privacy assurance of firms such as Google is shaken.

Google is likely to take steps to avoid a continuation of NSA surveillance.

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