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<h2 class="date-header">March 09, 2012</h2>
<div class="entry-category-balancing_act
entry-category-crime_and_punishment entry-category-current_affairs
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entry-category-lobbying entry-category-politics_and_government
entry-category-travel entry-category-webtech
entry-author-mike_scarcella entry-type-post entry"
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<h3 class="entry-header">DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any
Partnership Between Google, NSA</h3>
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<p>The Justice Department is defending the government's
refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any
cooperative research and development agreement between
Google and the National Security Agency.</p>
<p>The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy
Information Center sued in federal district court here to
obtain documents about any such agreement between the
Internet search giant and the security agency.</p>
<p>The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar”
response in which the agency said it could neither confirm
nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District
Judge Richard Leon in Washington <a
href="https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2010cv1533-15">sided
with the government</a> last July.</p>
<p>A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the dispute March 20.</p>
<p>EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early
2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and
Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber
attacks in China that year against Google.</p>
<p>EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between
the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to
fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010.</p>
<p>The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that
the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners
and research associations” to ensure the availability of
secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to
confirm or deny any partnership with Google.</p>
<p>The security agency said it routinely monitors
vulnerabilities in commercial technology and cryptographic
products because the government relies heavily on private
companies for word processing systems and e-mail software.</p>
<p>“If NSA determines that certain security vulnerabilities or
malicious attacks pose a threat to U.S. government
information systems, NSA may take action,” DOJ Civil
Division lawyers Catherine Hancock and Douglas Letter said
in a brief in the D.C. Circuit in January.</p>
<p>DOJ’s legal team said that acknowledging whether NSA and
Google formed a partnership from a cyber attack would
illuminate whether the government “considered the alleged
attack to be of consequence for critical U.S. government
information systems.”</p>
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<p>NSA said it cannot provide documents—or confirm their
existence—because the information would alert adversaries
about the security agency’s priorities, threat assessments
and countermeasures.</p>
<p>DOJ said media reports about the alleged Google partnership
with NSA do not constitute official acknowledgement.</p>
<p><em>The Washington Post</em> and <em>The New York Times</em>
both reported that Google contacted the NSA after the Jan.
2010 cyber attack, which the company said was rooted in
China and targeted access to accounts of Chinese human
rights activists. <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> said
NSA’s general counsel worked out a cooperative research and
development agreement with Google.</p>
<p>EPIC’s attorneys, including Marc Rotenberg, the group’s
president, said in court papers that the document request
includes records that are not relevant to the NSA’s
information assurance mission.</p>
<p>“The NSA mischaracterizes EPIC’s FOIA Request by stating
that responsive documents would reveal ‘information about a
potential Google-NSA relationship,’” Rotenberg said.</p>
<p>The crux of the records request, Rotenberg said, is
Google’s switch to application encryption by default for
Gmail accounts soon after the cyber attack. Google in 2008
began allowing users to encrypt mail passing through the
company servers, EPIC said in its brief, but encryption was
not provided by default.</p>
<p>EPIC’s brief said the failure of the NSA to conduct a
search for records “deprives the court of the ability to
meaningfully assess the propriety” of the agency’s response
that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of
responsive records.</p>
<p>“Without first conducting the search, not even the agency
can know whether there is a factual basis for its legal
position,” Rotenberg said.</p>
<p>EPIC said its records request does not seek documents about
NSA’s role to secure government computer networks. “Google
provides cloud-based services to consumers, not critical
infrastructure services to the government,” Rotenberg said.</p>
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<p class="entry-footer-info"> <span class="post-footers">Posted
by <a rel="author"
href="http://profile.typepad.com/1218477827s15125">Mike
Scarcella</a> on March 09, 2012 at 12:29 PM in <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/balancing_act/">Balancing
Act</a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/crime_and_punishment/">Crime
and Punishment</a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/current_affairs/">Current
Affairs</a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/justice_department/">Justice
Department </a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/legal_business_1/">Legal
Business</a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/lobbying/">Lobbying</a>,
<a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/politics-and-government/">Politics
and Government</a>, <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/travel/">Travel</a>,
<a href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/webtech/">Web/Tech</a>
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