US backdoors allowed Google hack
by admin on Jan.24, 2010, under Firewall of Freedom, Hack Attack
U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google
(CNN) — Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it’s that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?hpt=T2
January 24th, 2010 on 1:28 pm
A well written article by a respected expert. There is a fine line with governments need to monitor the ‘bad guys’ and the privacy of the individual citizen. This line is crossed when back doors are required by governments into everyone’s email, web browsing history, etc.
I have always thought though that if you have nothing to hide, you should not be worried if the government can read your email. This has clearly been incorrect thinking. If the back door is left open for the government to perform their required function, who is to ensure they are the only one using it?