[ISN] Google Confirms That It Fired Engineer For Breaking Internal Privacy Policies

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fired/

By Jason Kincaid
TechCrunch
September 14, 2010

Earlier today Gawker published an alarming report detailing the exploits 
of a former Google engineer who allegedly used his internal clearances 
to access private Gmail and GTalk accounts so that he could spy on and 
harass people, including four minors. The article repeatedly points out 
how much sensitive data the public has entrusted Google with, and 
highlights that the company’s internal security policies may not be 
enough to maintain that security should a trusted employee go rogue. 
Google has just responded to the article with this statement, and it 
doesn’t deny anything Gawker reported:

    "We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal 
    privacy policies. We carefully control the number of employees who 
    have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security 
    controls - for example, we are significantly increasing the amount 
    of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are 
    effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to 
    access these systems if we are to operate them properly - which is 
    why we take any breach so seriously."

    Bill Coughran, Senior Vice President, Engineering, Google 

While the Gawker article correctly said that Barksdale had been fired 
for this reason, Google had not previously confirmed it and Barksdale 
had refused to comment on why he had been dismissed.

[...]


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