Google Sacks Engineer For Privacy Breach
Google has fired a member of its engineering team in response to allegations he stalked and harassed teenagers, according to a report on a US blog.
Gawker reported that David Barksdale, a 27-year-old site reliability engineer based in Washington, had been accused of spying on minors’ Google accounts without their consent, according to accounts from an anonymous source.
Google confirmed today that it had fired Barksdale for a breach of its “strict internal privacy policies”, but provided no further details.
Barksdale admitted to Gawker that he had been fired, but did not detail the circumstances or allegations made against him.
“You must have heard some pretty wild things if you think me getting fired is newsworthy,” he said.
Barksdale is alleged to have met the teens through a technology gathering in Seattle and was sacked in July 2010 after his actions were reported to the company, the source told Gawker.
The source also said the harassment allegations did not appear to be sexual in nature, but were more concerned with the violation of personal privacy with at least four reported cases of spying on minors’ Google accounts.
Site reliability engineers are able to access sensitive company data owing to their role in responding to technical issues across the company’s platforms.