Earlier today Gawker published an alarming report detailing the exploits of a former Google engineer who allegedly used his internal clearances to access private Gmail and GTalk accounts so that he could spy on and harass people, including four minors. The article repeatedly points out how much sensitive data the public has entrusted Google with, and highlights that the company's internal security policies may not be enough to maintain that security should a trusted employee go rogue. Google has just responded to the article with this statement, and it doesn't deny anything Gawker reported: “We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies. We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls--for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective.