Google To Beef Up Privacy Team

Faced with a series of high-profile privacy gaffes, Google intends to hire computer "ninjas" to flag potential snafus before they pose problems.

The company recently posted a job announcement seeking data privacy engineers for the "privacy red team." The company says in the job description that it's seeking candidates to "independently identify, research, and help resolve potential privacy risks across all of our products, services, and business processes in place today." Privacy expert Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chair of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum, says he expects that other companies will follow Google's lead and hire their own "white-hat" privacy hackers in order to discover problems before independent experts like Mayer. "It's in line with the trend in a number of areas to find problems before your critics do, and try to fix them before someone turns them into a story," he says.