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The Military Google Government Security Technology

Google Engineers Refused To Build Security Tool To Win Military Contracts (bloomberg.com) 243

Posted by BeauHD from the moral-compass dept.
Mark Bergen reports via Bloomberg: Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in Google's cloud division surprised their superiors by refusing to work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as "air gap," the technology would have helped Google win sensitive military contracts. The coders weren't persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war, according to four current and former employees. After hearing the engineers' objections, Urs Holzle, Google's top technical executive, said the air gap feature would be postponed, one of the people said. Another person familiar with the situation said the group was able to reduce the scope of the feature.

The act of rebellion ricocheted around the company, fueling a growing resistance among employees with a dim view of Google's yen for multi-million-dollar government contracts. The engineers became known as the "Group of Nine" and were lionized by like-minded staff. The current and former employees say the engineers' work boycott was a catalyst for larger protests that convulsed the company's Mountain View, California, campus and ultimately forced executives to let a lucrative Pentagon contract called Project Maven expire without renewal.
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Google Engineers Refused To Build Security Tool To Win Military Contracts More

Google Engineers Refused To Build Security Tool To Win Military Contracts

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  • Better Off Anyway... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They're better off anyway removing everyone's privacy to slice and dice audience segments for Madison Ave.

    Oh look, tin foil is 20% at Home Depot Online with coupon code ACNUTTER2018.

  • Good! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 )
    Good! This is what people with morals are supposed to do. Now, if only we could have the same thing happen in our military, too, the world would be in a lot better shape.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yep, they have no problem monetizing every detail of people's private lives, but helping the government that gives them the right to speak out, protest and defends freedom would be evil. These people are clueless ideologues.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

        but helping the government that gives them the right to speak out

        Government doesn't give you any rights, you stupid sonofabitch.

        • Looking at the comments here, the incessant bootlicking and worship of authority is insane. What happened to Slashdot? Did all the libertarians finally come out as trumptards?

      • Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope.gmail@com> on Friday June 22, 2018 @07:25PM (#56831748) Journal

        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

        Notice how the government doesn't give you these rights -- you have them regardless of whether the government recognizes them. I thought there used to be libertarians on /. who knew about such things? Also, we've haven't been defending freedom for a long time. Iraq/Afghanistan/Qatar (and Vietnam before) aren't places we can "defend" since they don't belong to us. It's simply "war".

        • Notice how the government doesn't give you these rights -- you have them regardless of whether the government recognizes them.

          No, actually you don't have any rights at all. All you have is a restriction on the US government passing several laws. This is a very important distinction because if you actually had a "right" to free speech private companies would also have to respect that right. As it is they can fire you and/or make your life hell if they happen to disagree with you...as Google has done in the past.

          • People use the word right in two sense'since
            1 a legal right . Which exist primary as a object of a law. Which of course ceases to be if the law is changed.

            2. A natural right granted God as is spoken of in the declaration of independence.

            Of course naturally there is also freedom of association, which is nearly as important and people forget that just because you have freedom of speech that does not mean you are free from repercussions

            • We still have freedom of association ?
              That one died 50 years ago. Now we have special rights for speshul people.

              • Check out the boy scout case, the BSA was able to exclude anyone it wanted because of their 'freedom to associate' as I recall. Gov't couldn't force them to accept gay members, gay adult scout leaders, or female members. Ultimately they chose to, but we're never forced to.

            • a legal right . Which exist primary as a object of a law.

              Yes, but US law is similar to UK law in that you basically have the right to do anything unless there is a law saying that you cannot. In this system laws do not grant rights, they take them away. The result is that the only thing giving you a right is an absence of laws taking it away. This is a far weaker statement than other countries, like Canada, whose charter of rights and freedoms guarantees the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, association etc. as a matter of law and so binds everyone, including

        • Rights are worthless if you are unable to exercise them. Rights are only as strong as their enforcement. If someone violates your rights, who will enforce penalties against them? Who will set up incentives to prevent others from doing so? In most civilised countries, we delegate responsibility for this to an organisation that we call a government. It doesn't give you the rights, but it does try to stop anyone else from taking them away. The government is accountable to the people and the paragraph tha

          • But but but ... they were put there by the creator (whoever she is) and they're inalienable (I think this means they don't apply to Mexicans).

            The magic document says so!

    • Re: Good! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Is it morals? More likely the employees are just foreign. And let's not kid ourselves, the employees from China are sending all the good info back home to their military.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by El Cubano ( 631386 )

      Now, if only we could have the same thing happen in our military, too, the world would be in a lot better shape.

      I am going make a wild guess here: you completely lack perspective.

      First, when people in the military do that sort of thing you describe (disobey lawful orders from superiors) there are typically disciplinary repercussions. Thankfully, the vast majority of people in the military obey their orders and the vast majority of those giving orders do so with great care and diligence for the law and regulations.

      Of course, if you allow your opinion of the military to be dictated by the portrayals of Hollywood and wh

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        When I worked on a military bases, I never worried about locking my car or leaving valuables unattended. There are bad apples I'm sure, but generally the quality of politeness and respect for others is extremely high within the defense establishment.

        • Soldiers take it personally when their co-workers steal from them, something about trusting your buddy to have your back. There are stories about thieves not coming back from military exercises.

      • Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @06:54PM (#56831604)

        Their objection was, "we do not like military contracts, we do not want Google to seek more military contracts, and therefore we refuse to do this work because it will make us more competitive for military contracts." Many businesses would fire employees who actively work to harm the company in such a way.

        Not so much.

        If it became known that careers depend on doing something that one considers to be morally wrong, some group of employees would take the job. Because they have kids to feed, or just don't want a termination on their resume. So now you have a morale problem. People doing things that they don't really like. And they might actually sabotage the program. Or leak details to the enemy.

        Companies that do this kind of sensitive work as part of their business will vet their staff ahead of time and encourage those who might have qualms about the application of their work to move into a non classified program. Google is a big place and I'm sure something can be found for conscientious objectors to do.

      • the vast majority of people in the military obey their orders and the vast majority of those giving orders do so with great care and diligence for the law and regulations.

        You're confusing legality and morality.

        Of course, if you allow your opinion of the military to be dictated by the portrayals of Hollywood and what makes the news, you are likely to have an opinion like the one you seem to possess. That is, that most of the people in the military are scumbags with no regard for the law.

        I get that idea from things like having an ex-army ranger tell me about his failure to prevent a child rape by a fellow soldier in Viet Nam. Failure as in he didn't bother. Complicity all around. Or the gross underreporting of rape in the military. A woman joining the military can expect to be sexually assaulted at least once during her career, on average.

        Now, if Google was specifically asked by the military to something that was morally questionable (which they have not),

        Supporting any standing military in any way is morally questionable, because standing militaries are harmful to fre

    • I'm a little confused what do you think the military does?

      • Patrol borders for illegal migrants and drug smugglers, search and rescue, helping out at disasters, and guarding the borders are common tasks. The US Army also spends a lot of time keeping other countries borders open to American trade.

        • Patrol borders for illegal migrants and drug smugglers,

          That's just war. It's war on people in general, and brown people specifically.

          search and rescue, helping out at disasters,

          And I say unto thee, that's a lot of bullshit, in that a) it's the tiniest piece of what they do by calories expended, and b) they don't actually finish the job unless they are pursuing a military goal. That's why Puerto Rico is still fucked.

          and guarding the borders

          Bullshit so fine, you had to repeat it.

          The US Army also spends a lot of time keeping other countries borders open to American trade.

          Also known as "kills a lot of people for money"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        The US military, today, primarily exists to kill people in other countries and to make money for the defense contractors. What do you think it does?

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Morals maybe, but crappy ones. These are people with secure, lucrative jobs deciding to sacrifice others for their self image. Every time you turn down major contracts like that, people lose their jobs. Sometimes lots of people. So this was spoiled brats going 'I don't care if other people get fired, I am too valuable so I will not work on this!'
    • If a company wants employees with a "Moral Compass" that includes working for the military, they should avoid advertising a company motto that points in another direction. A motto of "Do no evil" might attract workers who don't want to work for the military, and repel workers who WANT to work for the military. Who knew that corporate propaganda might actually affect the company itself.
  • Is it just me or does "air gap" sound like the kind thing best implemented in hardware?
    • It's more likely something like this: New Air-Gap Jumper Covertly Transmits Data in Hard-Drive Sounds [slashdot.org]

    • Is it just me or does "air gap" sound like the kind thing best implemented in hardware?

      Yes, but in practice, it tends to get implemented between the ears of management.

    • Great question, air gaps protection concept, what are they.
      it's really rather simple but very difficult to do.

      it involves securing the environment in which you operate the equipment vers all types of wave transmissions

      let us just do a basic exercise. your office space with a view.
      A) electro, need something like a Faraday cage
      B) the glass - bounce a laser off the glass and I have a some of your conversations and draw the curtains so you can't peek in.
      C) sound- what goes via the ducts.

      change all that to a com

  • I have no issues doing any job (well most! there are some I would turn down).

    • Would you do every job Mike Rowe has done?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • lol have already been there, done that. I kid my clients now and tell them I get double if I sweat ;)
        • My first job was dish boy, 1.93 per hour.

        • You've inseminated cows (and actively collected the necessary semen)? Castrated sheep with your teeth? Repaired brickwork in active sewers? Cleaned out the deep dark hole various processing plants shove their refuse in, from the inside out?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      I had a related thought. Right now we are waiting on a contract, it is delayed because we do not have much leverage. Most of our people are having to work for nothing or are in a holding pattern looking for other work. Turning down work, or getting to keep your job after getting your company to turn down work, is a mind blowing luxury. It is throwing away what many fight to get.

      • Turning down work, or getting to keep your job after getting your company to turn down work, is a mind blowing luxury. It is throwing away what many fight to get.

        Living, or getting to keep living when the US government wants you dead, is a mind blowing luxury. And taking military contracts deprives people of that luxury. The military's job is to kill people. Everything else they do is pursuant to that goal.

        There is no reason to have an "army corps of engineers" carrying out public works. It should be a department of public works, not part of the department of defense.

        • You're an idiot.

          The military's job is to protect the Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign and domestic. Sometimes that means killing people, but that is always a collateral effect, never a goal. Well almost never. It is so rare that the few times it does happen, i.e. bin Laden, it becomes a big deal.

          Most military members never kill anyone in the course of their duties, so pretending that killing is the main purpose of the military shows a general lack of intelligence and an acceptance of t

    • Did you take the fluffer job in Fallout 2?

  • Ethics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22, 2018 @05:21PM (#56831158)

    Helping the dictatorial Chinese government find, imprison, torture and execute political prisoners: A-OK

    Helping your own country's military to keep its citizens safe: unacceptable

    Clearly Google engineers have their priority straight. If you're going to help the military, it has to be a Communist one.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )

      Better not to help either.

      Basically all of the advances in "keeping the children safe" since 9/11 have been intrusive. More cameras. Automated license plate/car tag tracking. More lists. More paper/ID checks. More biometrics.

      It's intrusion and violation of privacy under the guise of safety. Want to actually keep the US safe? Stop supporting countries that sponsor terrorists. Stop meddling in things that aren't the US's business.

    • There's a reason you failed to cite.

    • And I assume you have evidence that there was some overlap in membership of those two groups of Google engineers? Or did you forget that a corporation isn't really a single person?

    • I'm also guessing this suddenly became important around November of 2016.

    • Helping out Communist China can be done at the management level, helping out the American government often requires building stuff. You're blamin the wrong men.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Google pulled out of the Chinese market over that kind of thing. All Google services are blocked by the Great Firewall.

      • Google pulled out of the Chinese market over that kind of thing. All Google services are blocked by the Great Firewall.

        Google was forced out of the Chinese market over that kind of thing. They stuck it out for years prior to that, making all kinds of bullshit excuses about how it's better to serve the Chinese people slightly than not at all. Except they were serving the Chinese government more.

  • Wage? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @05:27PM (#56831200)

    >"The coders weren't persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war,"

    "Wage war"?

    1) We are not talking about a weapon.
    2) We aren't even talking about something that attacks or even spies on other countries or citizens, it is a computer security concept. Is better security "bad"?
    3) Why would the technology be used to "wage war"? Perhaps it might be to avoid war or lose important information. Is that "bad"?
    4) Or even if it could help to win a war [that protects Google, too], if it came to that, is that "bad"?
    5) If it enabled more secure "cloud" use by the military and saved tons of money, which means either less taxes or money better spent elsewhere, is that "bad"?
    6) Wouldn't some other company develop it instead?
    7) Couldn't it have non-military uses to improve security?

    It is one thing to stand on morals and principles. But what exactly is gained by anyone in this case?

    • there's tons of money in defense contracting (most of it for the owners, but I digress). They didn't sign on for that. This isn't a 'slippery slope' argument. It logically stands to reason that one successful contract leads to another. This is google engineers taking a stand now before the company they work for becomes the next Raytheon making missiles we sell to the Saudis that wind up hitting Doctors Without Boarders sites in Yemen. If you're going to take such a stand the time to do it is early on before

      • This isn't a 'slippery slope' argument.

        OK

        It logically stands to reason that one successful contract leads to another. This is google engineers taking a stand now before the company they work for becomes the next Raytheon making missiles we sell to the Saudis that wind up hitting Doctors Without Boarders sites in Yemen.

        I hope you understand that prefacing the sentence with "It logically stands to reason" does not make the argument here any less of a slippery slope argument.

        Here is the first part of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:

        A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is a consequentialist logical device[1] in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usually negative) effect.[2] The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences.

        Your argument is literally a perfect textbook example of a slippery slope argument.

      • If only I had points to mod you funny. You say that it wasnâ(TM)t a slippery slope argument straight before stating a slippery slope fallacy. The point to stand up is when you see something happening that is unethical.
        So many people are standing up for so many things that are in no way unethical (or in many cases factually wrong) that nobody has any idea whatâ(TM)s going on.. When something worth standing against actually happens, nobody will notice in the noise.

        If google decides no more military

        • You say that it wasnÃ(TM)t a slippery slope argument straight before stating a slippery slope fallacy.

          It's not a fallacy if there is an actual slippery slope there, and there is.

          The point to stand up is when you see something happening that is unethical.

          Yeah, they did. And they stood up. And that had an effect. They're doing precisely what you think they should be doing, so why are you even posting?

    • Given the very scanty details provided in the article, you seem to be leaping to conclusions.
      It's unlikely that people at our level of remove from the details can accurately form an evaluation of the sort you're presenting.

      Your line of reasoning is similar to lay-people second-guessing scientific experts on complex scientific topics.

      Also, suppose you're totally on-target in all your points.
      So what ? It's not your call whether these folks choose to do this work. It's theirs.

      • >"Given the very scanty details provided in the article, you seem to be leaping to conclusions."

        Well, it is true that the article doesn't reveal much except that it is an IT security method for cloud computing. And something called "air gap" in a security context generally doesn't lend itself to be a weapon or attack method in any way that I can imagine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      What is to be gained? Personal brand, new opportunities at other companies or notoriety within their own, and the only people who got hurt were the ones that would have to be laid off, and they must be losers anyway. Yeah,.. not impressed by this 'moral stand'.

    • >"The coders weren't persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war,"

      "Wage war"?
      1) We are not talking about a weapon.

      That is wholly irrelevant. Anything done under the auspices of the military will be used to help wage war, period, full stop. Supply chains are part of warfare. Informational security is part of warfare. If you hand something to the military, they will use it to kill people, because that's what they do.

      The authors and proponents of the second amendment to the constitution of the United States of America knew that standing militaries are harmful to freedom, and sought to make them unnecessary in America; but

  • Iâ(TM)m confident the winner of the contract appreciates their non effort.

  • As a business move, is government contracting really a good business for Google? They just got done (wisely) paring down distracting side ventures.How does this advance their core business?

    Yes, government contracting can be profitable, but not the kind of profitable that Google's used to. Plus, government work comes with lots of cumbersome strings attached.

    • Federal contracting IS an industry unto itself, and not one of Google's core competencies. Cool new tech is something Google does.

      *IF* they were to be involved in a federal contract, they might want to let IBM handle the federal process - IBM has a whole department or two that just does federal contracts. Then subcontract the tech to Google.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sejus ( 2109992 )
        Yes, IBM built their department while selling punch-cards to the Nazi's so they could count Jews and conduct the holocaust.

  • Insubordination (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quzak ( 1047922 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @06:22PM (#56831452)
    They should have been fired.

  • Creating an air gap is not a "technology". It's a process of separating a computer system from the Internet. Or, rather, not connecting it to the Internet in the first place. I'm guessing most people reading this know that, but the idiots that wrote the article make it sound like Google is refusing to invest a bunch of money and resources into creating some kind of complicated software that doesn't exist yet.

    Here's what I think is going on, Google has a business model based on hoovering up personal data in order to sell more advertising. Without the ability to sell adverts on the platform they'd be unable to take advantage of the subsidy to the services they provide to sell at a price below the competition. Instead of simply stating that it would be unprofitable for them to create an air gap system they claim that they are taking some moral high ground.

    Congratulations Google, you have been successful in creating clickbait that suckered me in. While I'm sure that got you some more advert money the people that know what an "air gap" actually is aren't going to be fooled. You just advertised that you are not willing to take computer security seriously, and you are willing to give up profitable government contracts to your competitors.

    In addition to your desire to hire based on skin color over technical merit I'm guessing that you are on a path to oblivion. One might say that they are paving a path with good intentions.

  • Fucking hypocrites (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @07:16PM (#56831706) Homepage

    When James damore rebels against Google because of his right wing beliefs, you all applaud him. When someone rebels in a way that doesn't align with the right, you cry.

    • James Damore didn't "rebel" against Google. Google claims to have a culture of open discussion. Damore wrote a calm, measured article he wanted to be openly discussed. Google claims to want to increase female employment. Damore suggested new possible ways to increase female employment.

  • And it means exactly nothing. The best implementation I ever saw was a pair of boxes with a physical "air gap" in the middle and a wireless connection going over it. To be not completely useless, it had a conventional firewall in there as well, but the term "air gap" is meaningless these days. It used to mean "physically isolated", but those days are over.

  • If Sergey wanted to get the project all they had to do is walk over and unplug the wire to the hardware running the project. It's not that hard and doesn't require an engineer.

  • but, when dealing with human beings, you should know that just about everyone has a price at which they can be bought.
    ( With enough Carrots, you don't need a stick )

    Feeble human traits like nobility, doing-the-right-thing, ethics, morals, etc. are no match for the promises of Wealth.
    ( You may come to regret such a decision in later years, but we rarely think that far ahead )

    They put enough money in front of these people and I guarantee you this becomes a totally different story.
    One that doesn't have the "fe

  • When people lack meaning in their lives, they have to find it somewhere, I suppose.

    Too bad the posturing is meaningless.

  • "Air gap" is a cutting edge feature? We had an air gap between our little WordPerfect network (in a military office) and the world in 1996 ...

    Whatever this is, I guess it isn't an actual air gap.

  • Are we pretending their brave decision to not do the job their employer wanted prevented the project from going forward? Are we assuming the gov't didn't just the the project outline and RFP to another vendor and pay them handsomely for the work Google refused?

    I suspect there's comparison to be made with florists and came bakers, but I haven't had my morning caffeine yet, so I'll defer to others about companies that find their clients 'objectionable' and refuse to work for them.

  • At some point there will be the "Animal loving nine" who have moral objections to advertising or providing directions to any restaurants serving meat or cheese. Google will be forced to remove all but strictest vegan restaurants from their maps and advertising platforms. I wonder how much will employees with their belief objections have to hurt the company bottom line before the company just fires anyone who doesn't agree.

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