Google Engineer Stalked, Spied on Minors

Looks like Facebook isn’t the only one with privacy issues. David Barksdale, a 27-year-old former Site Reliability Engineer at Google's Kirkland, Washington office, was fired in July after the company discovered that he violated the privacy of at least four minors during his employment, an unnamed source told Gawker. The self-described “hacker” met his teenage targets through a technology group in the Seattle area, and proceeded to spy on their accounts—tapping into the teens’ Google Voice call logs, and accessing contact lists and Gchat transcripts. In one case, Barksdale even unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list after one of the teenagers tried to cut communications with the Google employee. Barksdale has since been let go from Google, the company confirms, though it remains unclear how the company can prevent its employees from snooping on its users.