(TimesOnline) – Google is teaming up with the US National Security Agency to battle cyber-attacks from China in a move that is causing disquiet on the internet.

The alliance of the world’s largest internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance agency has provoked concern among privacy advocates. The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Centre filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more details yesterday hours after the deal was disclosed by The Washington Post.

The alliance puts Google in bed with the US Government because it challenges suspected Chinese Government interference on the internet.

It comes as Congress prepares to hold a hearing on Wednesday at which a senior Google executive will testify on the internet giant’s role in promoting democracy.

Nicole Wong, Google’s vice-president and deputy general counsel, will appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing on The Google Predicament: Transforming US Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security and Trade.

The agreement, which was still being finalised last night, would reportedly allow the NSA access to data from Google to help defend against cyber-attacks. But Google would not grant the agency access to users’ searches or e-mail accounts.

The Wall Street Journal said that Google began working with the NSA on the same day that it announced that hackers in China had made a cyber-attack on the company, targeting the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.

Google, which censors internet searches in China, has threatened to pull out of the Chinese market unless Beijing can guarantee uncensored searches.

The Pentagon said this week that it was putting cyberspace on the same level as land, sea and air as a potential battleground. A new US Cyber Command is being set up under Strategic Command to defend military computer networks and “conduct cyberspace military operations”.

Jack Goldsmith, co-author of a 2009 report entitled Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding US Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities, wrote in the Washington Post this week that the NSA had offensive capabilities.

“The NSA, the world’s most powerful signals intelligence organisation, is also in the business of breaking into and extracting data from offshore enemy computer systems and of engaging in computer attacks that, in the NSA’s words, ‘disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy the information’ found in these systems,” he wrote.

Source: Times Online

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