Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents
An internal Google database obtained by 404 Media shows Google recording childrens' voices, saving license plates from Street View, and many other self-reported incidents, large and small.
Not a surprise but man
It sounds like someone got ahold of a 6 year old copy of Google's risk register. Based on my reading of the article it sounds like Google has a robust process for identifying, prioritizing, and resolving risks that are identified internally. This is not only necessary for an organization their size, but is also indicative of a risk culture that incentivizes self reporting risks.
In contrast, I'd point to an organization like Boeing, which has recently been shown to have provided incentives to the opposite effect - prioritizing throughput over safety.
If the author had found a number of issues that were identified 6+ years ago and were still shown to be persistent within the environment, that might be some cause for alarm. But, per the reporting, it seems that when a bug, misconfiguration, or other type of risk is identified internally, Google takes steps to resolve the issue, and does so at a pace commensurate with the level of risk that the issue creates for the business.
Bottom line, while I have no doubt that the author of this article was well-intentioned, their lack of experience in information security / risk management seems obvious, and ultimately this article poses a number of questions that are shown to have innocuous answers.
I hate google as much as the next guy but this seems like just a bunch of minor incidents not worth reporting instead of a major coverup (like imo the title of the article implies).
That sounds like a bug tracker where stuff reports things that shouldn't have happened.
Mmmm…. I think the title may be a bit strongly worded, but the concept that a big data company like Google isn’t doing what you expect them to be doing with your data…. Despite clear efforts to do so… that’s kind of concerning.
Like it’s cool that they have this DB and that things like this are getting fixed, it might be nice if they were more transparent about this… but it seems like they’re trying. And yet, so many privacy issues crop up due to the shear quantity and variety of data they process.
It’s a fine line. If they’re working on them reporting the issue before it’s resolved increases the risk somebody can use this as a kind of todo list of social and technical engineering weakpoints to get at other user data.
I don't fully agree with you. It's certainly no major coverup but it's a heap of evidence that goes against this shiny veneer google maintains with the public
Google pretends they are champions of user privacy and protection to maintain trust and enable data collection on an unprecedented scale
When this article shows they are actually leaking private info left right and center, have the most nonchalant attitude towards respecting and maintaining our privacy and evidently 'keeping private info safe' (or should I say 'not being evil') is at the bottom of their priority list
bunch of minor incidents not worth reporting
That the personal data of millions of people are leaked is newsworthy, even more so if it was hidden from the victims.
Or just the tip of the iceberg of a larger, more systemic problem within the organization. Wild your default position is to assume Google is doing all the right things when we have a long history of the company being shady af and lying about it.
Sign up for free access to this post Free members get access to posts like this one along with an email round-up of our week's stories.