Computer users are seen at the reception area of Google's China headquarters in Beijing on Jan. 18, 2010. (AP)

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News last week that two of the most powerful players in the Internet universe will team up to fight an onslaught of cyber invasions. Google and the NSA — the National Security Agency — will collaborate on cyber security.

Word of the alliance comes just weeks after Google accused China of hacking into its source code and the digital jewels of dozens of other American companies.

And at a time when top intelligence officials warn critical American infrastructure is “severely threatened” by cyber attack.

But what about privacy?

This hour, On Point: Google, the NSA and the age of cyber insecurity.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Ellen Nakashima, reporter for The Washington Post. She broke the story on the NSA partnership with Google.

Joining us from Vancouver is Fred Cate, director at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, where he is also a professor of law at the Maurer School of Law.

Joining us from Washington is Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, from 2005 to 2009, where he worked on international data protection rules. He’s founder of Red Branch Law & Consulting.

Photo: csaveanu/flickr

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OK, the April Fool’s computer virus didn’t strike, didn’t rise up with its “botnet” and take over the world. But maybe it didn’t have to.

Just days before, a crack team of computer sleuths in Canada unveiled a global computer spying network, apparently run out of China, called “GhostNet.”

It’s a spying operation that has reached into more than a thousand key computers around the world, rifling through high-security files, even turning on computers’ cameras and microphones to watch and listen from halfway round the world.

This hour, On Point: The team who cracked the “GhostNet.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Toronto is Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, and the co-lead investigator on the team that exposed “GhostNet.” (Read their report here.) He also teaches political science and is co-founder and a principal investigator of the Information Warfare Monitor.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., is Rafal Rohozinski, co-lead investigator, with Ron Diebert, on the team that exposed “GhostNet,” and a founder and principal investigator of the Information Warfare Monitor. He is also a principal at The SecDev Group, a private think tank and consultancy with clients in “countries and regions at risk from violence and insecurity.” Its clients have included the U.S. Department of Defense.

Also from Washington, we’re joined by Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.