OPINION: Google seeks help

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The cyber attack on Google and other high-tech U.S. firms originating in China last December continues to have consequences surely unforeseen by the attackers.

The intrusion sought out proprietary information and access to the g-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The early suspicion was that the Chinese government was behind the attack, but it could have been an unaffiliated gang of aggressive hackers.

In any event, the attack prompted Google to state that it would no longer censor Internet searches for Beijing and that if the attacks and the demands for censorship persisted the giant search firm might pull out of China altogether.

The Chinese government, normally quick to take umbrage, was notably restrained in its response to Google.

Now it turns out that Google is in talks with the National Security Agency, the U.S. government’s supersecret surveillance and eavesdropping organization, about ways to prevent a recurrence of the attacks and perhaps to finger the attackers.

It is a significant but understandable change of policy for a company that is doggedly independent and says it did not participate in the agency’s post-Sept. 11 terrorist surveillance program.

Defense of cyberspace has become a significant part of NSA’s mission and that role was formalized last year with the creation of a “cyber command” in the agency.

An alliance, even one with strict safeguards, between the world’s largest Internet search company and a government agency that is the world’s largest and best electronic snooper, raises significant privacy concerns.

But once attacked, Google really had no choice but to seek help from NSA. The alternative was to leave the privacy of its users up to the goodwill of the Chinese.