A new document has shown that Google and the NSA have a close relationship, but it might not be what you think. Apparently, the head of National Security Agency spy program traded emails with Google where cyber security is concerned.
These email exchanges took place back in November of 2012, a year before former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked NSA documents that caused backlash from all around the world.
Based on the emails, which were captured by Al-Jazeera, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was told by then-NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, that he was organizing a meeting with the entire top tech CEOs in Silicon Valley for a date set for August 8, 2012.
"About six months ago, we began focusing on the security of mobility devices," Alexander wrote. "A group (primarily Google, Apple and Microsoft) recently came to agreement on a set of core security principles. When we reach this point in our projects we schedule a classified briefing for the CEOs of key companies to provide them a brief on the specific threats we believe can be mitigated and to seek their commitment for their organization to move ahead ... Google's participation in refinement, engineering and deployment of the solutions will be essential."
From what we can tell, there's nothing strange going on here, just Google and the NSA putting their resources to help with cyber security.
Now, while these meetings have not raised any red flags, it does bring into question how the NSA used information it got from Google and other big technology companies to spy on the American people and people outside of the country.
We have to bear in mind that the NSA secretly gained access to the main communications links that connect the worldwide data centers of both Google and Yahoo.
At the end of the day, however, we should draw wild accusations and conclusions from these emails. For the most part, they mean nothing because not enough evidence is there to prove Google is working with the NSA to help the agency do things that are unwarranted. So for now, be calm, and continue using Gmail to send that email you were composing before coming across this article.
