National Security Agency Pressed to Reveal Details on Google Deal - goodlateny

The Electronic Secrecy Information Center is locking horns with the Public Security Authority over a secret deal the agency cut with Google pursual an attack on Gmail by Chinese hackers in 2010.

The information center has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA to obtain information about the deal. That request was rejected by the agency. That rejection was upheld by a federal court. The hearing on the appeal of that conclusion is being held today in Washington, D.C.

In its Freedom of Info Bi request [PDF], the information snapper is requesting:

• All records concerning an agreement or similar groundwork for collaboration, terminal or draft, 'tween the NSA and Google regarding cybersecurity
• All records of communicating between NSA and Google concerning Gmail, including but not controlled to Google's decision to fail to routinely encipher Gmail messages prior to Jan. 13, 2010
• Every records of communications regarding NSA's role in Google's decision regarding the failure to habitually deploy encryption for mist-based computing service, such as Google Docs.

In rejecting the Exemption of Information Act, the NSA declined to either support or traverse the Google deal. Confirming or denying the Google mint, information technology argued, would reveal whether the agency had determined that vulnerabilities or cybersecurity issues pertaining to Google surgery certain of its commercial technologies could pull in U.S. government information systems sensitive to exploitation or attack.

In summation, it asserted that acknowledging a relationship between the NSA and Google could potentially alert adversaries to the NSA.

The Electronic Privacy Entropy Marrow counters that the NSA's reasons for denying the FOIA are "indistinct and conclusory" and don't meet the legal standards for refusal of such a request.

Fed District Court Judge Richard J. Leon sided with the NSA. In a decision [PDF] handed down in July 2011, the pass judgment wrote that the agency properly explained the relevance of the requested information to the National Security Agency's "Information Assurance" mission to status security and the trauma that could be caused by acknowledging the existence/nonexistence of the information.

Helium called the NSA's reception to the Exemption of Information Act "both logical and plausible" and said information technology satisfied the legal requirements for such matters.

In its appealingness [PDF] of Leon's decision, the information heart argued that the admitting of a look at with Google doesn't compromise national security.

"Patc the government agency Crataegus oxycantha choose to assert several statutory exemptions if IT wishes to withhold records in its self-possession, acknowledging the existence of unsolicited third-party e-mails sent to the NSA does not expose whatsoever information about the NSA's functions and activities," the center argued.

The 2010 Gmail attacks were controversial because they targeted U.S. government officials and because Google claimed the hackers behind the phishing sorties were sponsored past the Chinese government, an allegation that China denies.

One casualty of the attacks was Microsoft Windows, which Google employees began deserting following the incident.

Follow freelance applied science writer John P. Mello Jr. and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/469226/national_security_agency_pressed_to_reveal_details_on_google_deal.html

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