Leaked Slide Shows NSA Celebrated Victory Over Google's Security With A Smiley Face

Paul Szoldra,Michael KelleyOct 30, 2013, 22:30 IST

A new report from Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani of The Washington Post has lifted the veil on a top-secret NSA program that's sucking up vast swaths of data from Yahoo and Google servers overseas. The first thing that stands out is the drawing accompanying the report. From a presentation on "Google Cloud Exploitation" leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the slide shows a seemingly hand-drawn sketch showing how Google attempts to encrypt their data and how the NSA circumvents it. The Post explains:

In an NSA presentation slide on "Google Cloud Exploitation," however, a sketch shows where the "Public Internet" meets the internal "Google Cloud" where their data resides. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is "added and removed here!" The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. "I hope you publish this," one of them said.

More details to come on the report.

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Leaked Slide Shows NSA Celebrated Victory Over Google's Security With A Smiley Face