Google Confirmed Breaking Into Gmail Account Of Critic
By Denying The Action In An Unheard Of Denial
In an unusual move, Google is responding directly to former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington’s allegation that it accessed his Gmail account to root out his source for a major story.
“A few years ago, I’m nearly certain that Google accessed my Gmail account after I broke a major story about Google,” wrote Arrington on his personal blog Uncrunched. “I certainly freaked out when this happened, but I never said anything about it because I didn’t want people to be afraid to share information with TechCrunch. But I became much more careful to make sure that communications with sources never occurred over services owned by the companies involved in the story.”
Google denies that charge.
“Mike makes a serious allegation here — that Google opened email messages in his Gmail account to investigate a leak,” Kent Walker, Google general counsel, said in a statement. “While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it’s hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way.”
http://recode.net/2014/03/25/google-general-counsel-to-arrington-allegation-we-dont-snoop-on-gmail-to-find-leakers
