Garrett Wasny, MA, CMC, CITP

According to CNET, Google is investigating whether employees in its China office were involved in the attacks on its network that led to theft of intellectual property.

I discussed this very scenario three years ago in a forum on Google Blogoscoped, a leading Google blog.  I noted:

Google could be the victim of political or corporate espionage or sabotage. It’s not unreasonable to assume that numerous governments around the world (US? UK? Russia? China? Iran? Israel?) and leading multinationals already have spies or moles embedded undercover in Google. Some of the agents may be benign, but some may have agendas either bad or good depending on your perspective. Chinese agents, for example, could scan through Gmail and Google Docs and Spreadsheets to look for dissident activity. American agents could be looking for evidence of terrorist cells and operations.

In a January 18. 2010 Google Blogoscoped forum, I wrote a follow-up posting:

It appears Google has concentrated almost exclusively on containing malicious software and other external threats and perhaps overlooked and underestimated "the enemy within": rogue Google employees engaged in subterfuge right under their noses.

Pardon my histrionics, but this reminds me of that scene from the Quantum of Solace when Mr. White boasts "the first thing you should know about us is... we have people everywhere." Then M's own personal bodyguard pulls a pistol and opens fire in the room.

How many "Mr Whites" and "M bodyguards" now work for or with Google? And not just from China but other countries as well?