Emails Reveal Close Google Relationship With NSA

I don't really see how the title of the article matches its contents. Sure, they figured out how to super-impose the NSA logo onto stock photos of Google, but you usually need actual evidence in order to report on something.

The article's claims seem to be:

- The NSA is in communication with tech companies and is attempting to make friends with them (duh).

- The NSA worked with unrelated tech companies to maybe-maybe-not fix a BIOS issue (why is this in the article?)

- The NSA periodically invites Brin and Schmidt to "security conferences" where they are presumably cozied up to by second-tier brass. Brin and Schmidt don't seem to think much of these invitations as they both declined the one that Aljazeera managed to get its hands on.

So, uh, what?

This is the second time this post has hit HN today; the first was flagged dead.

... on an issue unrelated to user data.

Cryptome added a news headline from 2012 to this: "NSA Scares CEOs Into Cyber Spying" http://cryptome.org/2014/05/nsa-scares-ceos.pdf

Well, if the NSA has any information about security holes,it would be nice if they would let everybody know. But they surely weren't just talking about some backdoors in a secure facility...?

It is so depressing to be in tech here in Europe. Last week it became finally and unambiguously clear that we can't even rely on services by local subsidiaries of US-owned companies any more without breaking our EUropean privacy laws[1].

The servers are in Ireland? Yep, that's US jurisdiction!

So we now have the choice of either maneuvering around some of the best and biggest services and infrastructures out there or, alternatively, breaking the law and giving up sovereignty over our data.

If Google is complicit, it doesn't come as a surprise. Still, it adds insult to injury.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27191500