Monday, September 9, 2013

Sublime irony: NSA spies on Google

Finally, our friendly spooks are doing right by the little man by spying on Google's internal networks.

Allegedly, of course, only allegedly.

Understandable nonetheless. If you take the time to look at some of Google's source code: terrifying is not too strong a description.

Or, in the words of non IT people: sheer magic. Software engineers are shifty people, they shift bits left or right as they please without any public oversight. At times, they "carry over" a bit, remember the scenes on TV of Google employees ambulating about the Google-Plex? They have their pockets full of bits which they are carrying over to whoever needs them.

But the worst is this well known Google tradition of giving their folks some time to work on whatever project they want!

This outrageous fact has been praised, just do a Google search for the public's reaction and the media accolades. It is an outright anarcho-syndicalist approach to life, okay, without the syndicalist but still.

Imagine the good auto workers at Ford or GM being told, hey guys, take half a day each week and do to cars and trucks whatever you want!

What would happen? The public and the media would freak out.

At best, the product of "whatever you want" in auto manufacturing would look like the Neverwashaul, at worst, well maybe a bicycle with a big GM logo.

We should all be glad that the US government in its infinite wisdom goes into the internal network of Google, allegedly, to keep tabs on the employees because management at Google has abdicated this critical function for what, half a day or a whole day each week?

If Google lets employees spend a whole day on whatever the geeks feel like, that makes 20% of the work week without supervision. Which, by any estimate, would be about the same amount of time the NSA has no clue what its employees are up to.

And the NSA knows first hand what happens then.



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