This is an important point. I am reading a lot of defence on here for google and there is little to back it up. This isn't a minor oversight executed by a small team, rather the precise opposite.
I would say Google's reply has been a lie(dare I say "utter bullshit") - an idea like this doesn't accidentally become implemented. It wasn't even implemented in a small way, both being executed from inside google and google finding it worthwhile to pay a separate company to expand the program for them. (A company doing exactly what google has asked of them, to the point of google having to approve the scripts used by callers.)
This is incredibly bad of them, and while "HQ" might not have fully understood the methods being used they wouldn't have not known nothing about it. It's about on par with News Corp executives pretending they didn't know about voicemail-hacking.
I would say Google's reply has been a lie(dare I say "utter bullshit") - an idea like this doesn't accidentally become implemented. It wasn't even implemented in a small way, both being executed from inside google and google finding it worthwhile to pay a separate company to expand the program for them. (A company doing exactly what google has asked of them, to the point of google having to approve the scripts used by callers.)
This is incredibly bad of them, and while "HQ" might not have fully understood the methods being used they wouldn't have not known nothing about it. It's about on par with News Corp executives pretending they didn't know about voicemail-hacking.