Google & the NSA – Who thinks this is a good idea?

The news is all over the web today about Google teaming with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in order to figure out how Google was hacked and who was really responsible for the recent dust-up between Google and China.

The back story here is that Google was hacked in December and while the company didn’t come right out and say it in their initial statement the impression they gave was they were blaming China for being behind the attack.

Now we have Google and the NSA joining forces to find out for sure but that has more than a few people concerned about the implication of this little get together. As Noah Shachtman at the Danger Room blog puts in a post

The National Security Agency is widely understood to have the government’s biggest and smartest collection of geeks — the guys that are more skilled at network warfare than just about anyone on the planet. So, in a sense, it’s only natural that Google would turn to the NSA after the company was hit by an ultra-sophisticated hack attack. After all, the military has basically done the same thing, putting the NSA in charge of its new “Cyber Command.” The Department of Homeland Security is leaning heavily on the NSA to secure .gov networks.

But there’s a problem. The NSA and its predecessors also have a long history of spying on huge numbers of people, both at home and abroad. During the Cold War, the agency worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams. The during war on terror years, the NSA teamed up with the telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on customers’ phone calls and Internet traffic right from the telcos’ switching stations. And even after the agency pledged to clean up its act — and was given wide new latitude to spy on whom they liked – the NSA was still caught “overcollecting” on U.S. citizens. According to the New York Times, the agency even “tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant.”

I’m sorry but the idea of a company with more data on individuals from around the world getting in bed with an agency known for spying on people and countries as they see fit scared the beejezus out of me.

Doesn’t this idea bother anyone else?