14 DAY TRIAL // A Google engineer has some harsh words to say about the GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, saying it’s even worse than the NSA.
Mike Hearn, a Google employee who works on anti-hacking systems says he spent two years building on the networks that replicate Google data between centers.
Now, after it’s been revealed that the NSA has actually infiltrated the private network between Google’s data centres, making all data there easily readable, Hearn seems to be positively furious with the intelligence community, saying that the GHCQ is even worse than the NSA.
“We designed this system to keep criminals out. There’s no ambiguity here,” Hearn wrote on Google+. “The warrant system with skeptical judges, paths for appeal, and rules of evidence was built from centuries of hard won experience. When it works, it represents as good a balance as we've got between the need to restrain the state and the need to keep crime in check. Bypassing that system is illegal for a good reason,” he carries on saying.
Bitterly, Hearn points out that in the world we’re living in, laws are for the little people and that no one at the GCHQ or the NSA will ever stand before a judge and answer for what’s been happening.
The Google employee finishes his rant by thanking the whistleblower who made it possible to unveil the NSA programs.
“Thank you Edward Snowden. For me personally, this is the most interesting revelation all summer,” he writes.
This week’s revelations also included information that Yahoo’s network was also targeted by the intelligence community in a similar manner, through the same MUSCULAR program run by the NSA and GHCQ in collaboration. Given Google’s size and reach, however, the breach of their communications has a much larger impact on the regular Internet user.